Exploiting a Virtual Load Balancer with SDN-NFV Framework

Network infrastructure has evolved rapidly during the last two decades, offering demand-driven cloud service automation models with flexible infrastructure resources. Due to the flexibility and significant economic possibility, network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) are considered as a vital technology for future network infrastructure. SDN-NFV provides a virtual network infrastructure where operators and service providers can program network functions (such as routers, intrusion detection systems, load balancers, firewalls) on vendor requirements instead of implementing hardware-based middleware. The objective of this work is to implement a load balancer with NFV concept and evaluate how network behaves in terms of packet loss and throughput. PDX is used as SDN controller to simulate the network and click modular router is used to develop the load balancer. Mininet emulator is used to design and implement the network.