Software Defined Network based Load Balancing for Network Performance Evaluation

Load balancing distributes incoming network traffic across multiple controllers that improve the availability of the internet for users. The load balancing is responsible to maintain the internet availability to users in 24 hours by 7 days a week. However, the internet become unavailable since the load balancer is inflexibility, costly, and non-programmable for settings adjustment especially in managing the network traffic congestion. An increasing user using mobile devices and cloud facilities, the current load balancer has limitations and demands for the deployment of a Software-Defined Network (SDN). SDN decouples network control, applications, network services, and forwarding roles; hence makes the network more flexible, affordable, and programmable. Furthermore, it has been found that SDN load balancing performs intelligent action, efficient and maintains better QoS (Quality of Service) performance. This study proposes the application of SDN-based Load Balancing since it provides pre-defined servers in the server-farm that receive the arrived Internet Protocol (IP) data packet from various clients in the same number of loads and process orders for each server. Experiments have been conducted using MininetTM and based on several scenarios (Scenario A, Scenario B, and Scenario C) of network topologies. Parameters used to evaluate the load balancing in SDN are throughput, delay, and jitter. Findings indicated that scenario A gives a high throughput, scenario B and C produce a low jitter values and scenario C produces the lowest delay. The impact of SDN brings a multi-path adaptive direction in finding the best route for a better network performance.