A More Flexible SDN Architecture Supporting Distributed Applications

Software Defined Networking (SDN) abstracts network control logic from switches to a logically centralized controller with software implemented applications. Unfortunately, not all the applications fit the centralized control architecture, and the centralization may even degrade the performance of these applications. Moreover, even though SDN articulates a vision for programmable networks, the OpenFlow instructions with simple match-action fields restrict the flexibility of switches, and the programmability of switches has rarely been actually touched. To strike a balance between programmability and pragmatism of SDN, we propose a more flexible and powerful SDN control architecture to support distributed applications besides simple OpenFlow instructions. The distributed applications run independently in switches, and the controller is responsible for the installation and configuration of these applications. The evaluation shows the proposed architecture is able to access more local details efficiently with the centralized SDN control.