Load-Balancing Multiple Controllers Mechanism for Software-Defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new form for networking that has the potential to have a major impact on Internet technology. Key aspects of SDN include the separation of data plane and the control plane. SDN architecture facilitates the management of complex networks and represents a new solution for future network applications Internet technology. As the size of networks increases, the scalability of the centralized controller becomes increasingly important. This work proposed a load-balancing mechanism for use in a multiple-controller SDN environment by implement a hierarchical control plane with both a meta-control plane and a local control plane. The meta-control plane analyzes the resources and utilization of the local control plane to optimize processing performance. This mechanism supports the load balancing of the local control plane to optimize data plane performance and eliminate the bottleneck of the centralized control in a network. This work analyzes the proposed load-balancing mechanism in a multiple-controller SDN environment. The results indicate that the meta controller based manager mechanism can monitors and effectively deal with the loading of the overloaded local controller. Based on the results thus obtained, the proposed local control plane scheduling balances the loadings of the multiple controllers and increases the network throughput by 12.7 and 9.2 % over those achieved using a centralized controller and multiple controllers without a scheduling mechanism.