Three-Tier SDN Architecture for 5G: A Novel OpenFlow Switch or Traditional

Fifth generation (5G) cellular networks demand high throughput with low levels of delay and congestion within the core network. Excessive throughput demands at the core network with the exponential increase in the number of mobile users and devices have become major challenges for 5G. Several techniques have been developed for offloading traffic at the front line of cellular networks. For example, Local IP access (LIPA) and selective IP traffic offload (SIPTO) are current data offloading technologies. In this article, we propose femtocell IP access (FIPA) and selective local controller traffic offloading (SLCTO) technique to offload traffic at the edge of the cellular network without forwarding it through the core network. Our proposed FIPA and SLCTO technologies rely on our previously proposed 3-Tiered software defined networking (SDN) architecture for dense networks (DenseNets). According to our simulations, FIPA and SLCTO over a 3-Tiered SDN architecture outperform existing offloading techniques with low delay, high throughput, and low cost.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging architecture which decouples networks control plane and data plane physically. It makes control plane programmable trough a centralized controller, and builds intelligent and flexible networks. The OpenFlow is one of the most famous SDN protocols, which acts as a southbound interface between control plane and data plane. In this survey, SDN implementation approaches and different southbound interfaces, beside different version of OpenFlow, are introduced. In addition to general architecture of SDN, different wireless architectures are discussed. Here, also potential SDN’s applications and research areas including hot topics such as Information Centric Networks, Cloud and datacenters, multimedia, wireless and mobile networks over SDN are reviewed.

Software-defined networking (SDN) attracts the attention of the research community in recent years, as evidenced by a large number of survey and review papers. The architecture of SDN clearly recognizes three planes: application, control, and data plane. The application plane executes network applications; control plane regulates the rules for the entire network based on the requests generated by network applications; and based on the set rules, the controller configures the switches in the data plane. The role of the switch in the data plane is to simply forward packets based on the instructions given by the controller. By analyzing SDN-related research papers, it is observed that research, from the very beginning, is insufficiently focused on the data plane. Therefore, this paper gives a comprehensive overview of the data plane survey with particular emphasis on the problem of programmability and flexibility. The first part of the survey is dedicated to the evaluation of actual data plane architectures through several definitions and aspects of data plane flexibility and programmability. Then, an overview of SDN-related research was presented with the aim of identifying key factors influencing the gradual deviation from the original data plane architectures given with ForCES and OpenFlow specifications, which we called the data plane evolution. By establishing a correlation between the treated problem and the problem-solving approaches, the limitations of ForCES and OpenFlow data plane architectures were identified. Based on identified limitations, a generalization of approaches to addressing the problem of data plane flexibility and programmability is made. By examining generalized approaches, open issues have been identified, establishing the grounds for future research directions proposal.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) promises the vision of more flexible and manageable networks, but requires certain level of programmability in the data plane. Such a flexible, programmable data plane implementation is OpenFlow (OF) which these days is seen as primary model of SDN data plane. In this paper we focus on the limitations of OF in packet switching performance. We share some measurement results we collected using an OF 1.3 prototype based on Intel's Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) and we also describe some optimization ideas. While OF 1.0 can be implemented on high-speed Ethernet switch hardware it has certain disadvantages in the area of flexibility. On the other hand OF 1.3 offers good-enough flexibility, but the poor performance of OF 1.3 implementations seems to represent a roadblock to SDN adoption. In this paper we argue that contrast to the common view, the overhead of flexibility is relatively low. We also argue that the apparent difference between a programmable data plane and a state of the art layered data plane is not primarily due to flexibility itself, but because the lack of optimization in case of flexible implementations.

In recent years, SDN has evolved as a promising alternative to the traditional networking paradigm. This is because the traditional network is decentralized, making it difficult to manage and provide trouble-shooting. SDN is an approach to network management whereby the forwarding process of the data plane (DP) is disassociated from the control plane (CP). The CP is responsible for decision-making. SDN centrally control the network infrastructure and make it programmable. Communication between the two planes (data and control) is carried out by the OpenFlow (OF) protocol. The deployment of SDN was initiated by Mr. Matrin Casado and his research team in 2008. The original projects developed at Stanford University were SANE and ETHANE. Security reports and web articles suggest that SDN (Software Defined Network) has the caliber to defend DDoS attacks. The year 2017 has been declared as the year of SDN adaption and DDoS mitigation. The initial effort in the direction of compiling the detection and mitigation approaches has been done in (Dayal et al., 2016). Recently a similar effort has been done in (Rochak et al., 2019). The CP of SDN has a complete visibility of the network which makes traffic monitoring feasible. Moreover, SDN open flow switches contain forwarding logic only; decision-making capability is softwarized at 58controller. This helps the controller to instruct and configure the switches with new flow rules which the switches follow. This facilitates the network admins to detect and mitigate these attacks easily. SDN have gained momentum among the possible solutions of DDoS attacks due to its decentralized nature of network management, but solutions come with its repercussions. The centralization and open architecture framework makes SDN difficult for widespread adaptation. The chapter begins with an introduction to DDoS attacks and its classification such as volumetric attack, protocol exploitation attack and application attack. In the next section, we discuss the possible DDoS attacks over SDN framework. We have categorized the vulnerability into three classes: DDoS attack on data, control, and application planes (APs). The DDoS attack on DP can further be classified into TCAM exhaustion, switch DDoS, ICMP flood, TCP flood, TCP_SYN flood, etc. We would discuss Resource depletion, OF bandwidth exhaustion, amplification attacks in DDoS attack over CP. HTTP flooding and Slowloris attack has been discussed in DDoS attack over AP. The next section highlights the working of attack tools used in performing DDoS attacks. Various DDoS tools have been widely exploited to render DDoS attacks and facilitate attackers to carry out dangerous attack on target; here target may be network resources, server resources, or applications. The fourth section focuses on the state-of-the-art for detection and mitigation approaches of DDoS attacks. Detection approaches are classified into statistical, policy, and machine learning-based approaches. DDoS mitigation OF switches, including Alcatel Lucent’s OmniSwitch, Brocade’s MLXe series routers, and applications such as DefensePro by Radware that are available in market; also depend on the statistical threshold to detect the DDoS attack. In addition, this section also incorporates a brief analysis of the previous defense mechanism of the last 10 years and analyzes and compares the products of different security vendors like Cloudflare, Radware, Akamai, Arbor, Nexusguard, etc.

5G is a new paradigm that brings new technologies to overcome the challenges of the next-generation wireless mobile network. Also, 5G is expected to supply fastest, most reliable network access to support huge data traffic and massively connected nodes with low latency and high throughput. There are different new technologies that are emerging to tackle requirements of the future wireless mobile network, such as Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN) and cloud computing. The heterogeneous environment of 5G will cause frequent handoff in small cells where users join and leave frequently. Therefore, in this paper, the focus is on secure and seamless handover mechanism to supply strong, quick and mutual authentication. And, a careful attention is needed to security challenges, therefore, potential pitfalls can be avoided. It is begun by explaining emerging technologies for the 5G mobile network. Then, the architecture of SDN is briefly described. Finally, this article presents a fast and efficient vertical handover authentication for next-generation wireless mobile communication - 5G - based on SDN architecture.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks represent a major concern in modern Software Defined Networking (SDN), as SDN controllers are sensitive points of failures in the whole SDN architecture. Recently, research on DDoS attacks detection in SDN has focused on investigation of how to leverage data plane programmability, enabled by P4 language, to detect attacks directly in network switches, with marginal involvement of SDN controllers. In order to effectively address cybersecurity management in SDN architectures, we investigate the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to perform automated DDoS Attacks Detection (DAD), specifically focusing on Transmission Control Protocol SYN flood attacks. We compare two different DAD architectures, called Standalone and Correlated DAD, where traffic features collection and attack detection are performed locally at network switches or in a single entity (e.g., in SDN controller), respectively. We combine the capability of ML and P4-enabled data planes to implement real-time DAD. Illustrative numerical results show that, for all tested ML algorithms, accuracy, precision, recall and F1-score are above 98% in most cases, and classification time is in the order of few hundreds of upmu text {s} in the worst case. Considering real-time DAD implementation, significant latency reduction is obtained when features are extracted at the data plane by using P4 language.Graphic

Traffic demand in terms of total traffic volume and bit rate of mobile users is expected to increase exponentially over the coming years. As a result, current cellular networks are rapidly reaching their capacity limitations. Rescaling existing networks and protocols will not solve the problem due to a number of reasons. Firstly, the cost of upgrading backhaul networks is very high. Secondly, the bottleneck is moving from the Radio Access Network (RAN) to the core network. Finally, difficulty of mobility management and operational cost are becoming very high. Therefore, a recent direction in research has been to deploy high dense heterogeneous networks called DenseNets. In this paper, a novel three-tiered Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture is proposed to support heterogeneous DenseNets. SDN architecture with the proposed 3-tiers, identified as physical, control and management layers, is capable of tackling the aforementioned problems, as well as mitigating network bottlenecks, latency and interference.

Software‐defined networking (SDN) is a relatively new approach in network management that proposes to separate the network control (Control plane) and the forwarding process (Data plane) to optimize the network infrastructure and improve network performance, controllability, manageability and flexibility. However, like every technology, SDN has brought its own new challenges in terms of security and scalability which are very important aspects that should be considered to design and build a resilient architecture in order to meet carrier grade network requirements. In this paper, we propose a secure SDN architecture with IEEE 802.1X port‐based authentication where we also consider the controller's scalability issue by devolving the access control capability to the data plane. In this way, we reduce the high demand and the workload on the SDN controller. Our proposed model presents a novel SDN network architecture and logical network segmentation which provides an optimal and secure network access with low latency. We have implemented and tested our architecture to show its performance (authentication delays). Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architecture was developed to address the shortcomings of traditional network architectures. It allows system administrators to easily manage and configure the network by separating and abstracting the control plane from the data plane. All the knowledge and intelligence of SDN is concentrated in a software entity called the SDN controller, making the network programmable. However, a large-scale SDN architecture, particularly in the IoT domain, requires the implementation of a physically distributed control mechanism. Such a mechanism, based on the East/West interface raises many challenges in terms of scalability, reliability, security, consistency, and traceability. The development of the Blockchain allows addressing some of these challenges. In this paper, we present a design using Blockchain technology to improve SDNs in terms of trackability and discuss the adaptations required for large-scale deployment. Experimental results clearly show that the use of a proof-of-authority consensus algorithm in combination with a Merkle tree approach reduces the impact in terms of latency as well as in terms of Gas consumption.

The Internet has reached a breaking point, enabling ubiquitous accessibility to all digital demands. Though people have accelerated their use of overall digital demands due to the convenience of the Internet, where nearly everything is connected and accessible, it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage and modify networks. It is always a challenge to meet the emerging needs of network industry. SDN framework was proposed to overcome traditional network architecture (TNA) restrictions in order to cope with contemporary network management in terms of flexibility, agility, responding to faults, and dynamic changes. SDN assists network operators by uncoupling the control plane from its underlying ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) hardware often called as forwarding plane by allowing the networks to programme as per the anticipated network functionality. Now, switching from traditional to software-defined networking styles, it is worth to check the robustness of the open flow (south bound interface)-based controller platform and the capability of its fault tolerance attribute to approach the successful SDN implementation. The performance of SDN open flow controllers plays a vital role in SDN implementation, which is meant for the separation between control and data plane to leverage the life of network industry. This paper comprehensively surveys the contrast between traditional network architecture (TNA) and software-defined network architecture. This research work discusses about the best feasible SDN implementation, as well as the selection of a useful controller platform for overcoming traditional network constraints and the performance assessment criteria for SDN open flow controllers. Further, the survey is continued with possible literature or work done by various researchers on performance analysis and evaluation of open flow-based SDN controllers as well as in a group of two or more controllers with respect to multifarious network condition, network criteria/parameter/metric, scaling of network load resources with most important varying network topology design. Ultimately, it strives to point ongoing research omission with respect to controller’s performance bottleneck benchmark suggesting optimized solution when it is well experimented.KeywordsTraditional network architecture (TNA)Software-defined networking (SDN)SDN open flow controllersOpen flow protocolPerformance evaluation/analysis

The software-defined networking (SDN) paradigm proposes the decoupling of control and data planes and a centralized software-oriented management approach based on a central controller, easing the development of new applications and services. These design principles pave the way for a more flexible, fast, and dynamic software-controlled network. However, in terms of security, the elements that comprise the SDN architecture present several vulnerabilities, which could be exploited by attackers to carry out malicious actions and thus affect the network and its services. Although for several years, some studies have already focused on identifying the weaknesses of the SDN layer structure, the nature of the attacks, and possible solutions for this paradigm, the literature contains few contributions that review and discuss this topic in an integral fashion. This paper provides a comprehensive, updated, and detailed review of the main security issues and mitigating measures for all layers and interfaces of the SDN architecture, classifying the contributions according to the STRIDE threat modeling methodology categories. Finally, this manuscript identifies, discusses, and synthesizes open challenges and future research directions in this area.

Research on future 5G networks has geared up in the past couple of years, and among many other, seamless mobility is considered as a cornerstone of 5G networks. Lately, many mobility solutions have been put forward, among them are Software Defined Networking (SDN) based Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) and Distributed Mobility Management (DMM). SDN-PMIP advocates the benefits of control and data plane separation, but poses major limitation in terms of mobility support across multiple domains. DMM takes care of inter-domain handovers through on demand mobility feature, but has limitations like excessive control signaling, tunneling overheads and inefficient routing. This paper presents a comprehensive solution to provide mobility across multiple domains in SDN-PMIP by utilizing the on demand mobility feature of DMM. Concept of on demand mobility is to provide mobility support to only those mobile nodes which require it, by exploiting the IPv6 mandatory feature of supporting multiple prefixes. In our proposed solution, controllers in multiple SDN-PMIP domains communicate with each other in distributed manner to facilitate seamless inter-domain mobility. The proposed solution also introduces a new optimized routing concept which resolves the triangular routing issue faced by various inter-domain mobility solutions. Analytical modeling based performance evaluation in terms of handover delay, transmission delay and tunnel usage, shows that the proposed solution achieves substantial improvements over previous works.

<p>Software-Defined-Networking (SDN) simplifies the configuration complexity in the computer communication network by decoupling the control plane from the data plane in a switch. In SDN, the switch has the data plane only and is configured by the logically centralised controller which simplifies the forwarding of packets in the network. However, an SDN switch is sensitive to delay and loss of packets which significantly affects the network performance. This thesis uses queueing theory to conduct modelling and performance analysis of OpenFlow-based SDN switches. OpenFlow is the de-facto protocol for communication between an SDN switch and the controller. Using queueing theory, three aspects of packet processing in an SDN switch are explored. First, the existing research has primarily modelled the output buffer of an SDN switch using two buffer sharing mechanisms: the single shared buffer and the priority buffer. However, the effect of buffer dimensioning in these buffer sharing mechanisms has not been investigated. Buffer dimensioning helps in determining the minimum buffer capacity for a desired loss probability. The research in this thesis shows that the use of priority buffer in an SDN switch reduces the time to update flow tables than the shared buffer but at the cost of a higher buffer capacity. Second, much of the existing research has not investigated the impact of internal buffering of data packets whereby a fraction of a data packet header is sent to the controller instead of an entire data packet. To investigate the impact of internal buffering, the queueing model for an SDN switch with the internal buffer is developed. The investigation shows that at the time of congestion, the internal buffer in an SDN switch improves the network performance with lower delay and lower packet loss. Finally, existing research has focused on a software switch in SDN and very little research has studied the performance of a hardware switch. To characterise the performance of SDN-based hardware and software switches and identify the tradeoffs between them, a unified queueing model has been developed. The unified queueing model is an analytical tool for network engineers to predict delay and packet loss in their SDN deployments. The analysis shows the benefits of a hardware switch over a software switch. These benefits are lower delay and lower packet loss. However, the increasing involvement of the controller reduces the benefit of using a hardware switch, i.e. forwarding packets at the line speed rate. This research guides network designers and analysts in the selection of the shared or buffer model for an SDN switch for their desired Quality of Service (QoS). Furthermore, the developed queueing model for an SDN switch with the internal buffer studies the impact of internal buffering in an SDN switch. Finally, the unified queueing model helps in the selection of a software or hardware switch in SDN.</p>

Software Defined Network (SDN) Technology made tremendous changes in networking field by controlling the hardware with remote software by decoupling data plane and control plane. The focus here is on the controller which is part of control plane. A controller is a central part of SDN; it is an intermediary between Data plane and Forwarding plane. It takes prime place in SDN architecture like Operating System in Computers. SDN Controller is a software which directs the packets using flow rules and also contains statistical information of network. The controller orchestrates the networking devices such as switches and routers by channelizing the packets. SDN controller has different flavor based on the commercial requirement achieved by including new pluggable module. This paper discusses some of the SDN Controller with their feature; the controllers are POX, NOX, Floodlight, ODL, Open Contrail. This paper also compares the characteristic of centralized and distributed controller by focusing on performance, bandwidth and round-trip time of Floodlight and Open Daylight (ODL) controller. The simulation is conducted using Mininet.