Evaluation of Multiple Controller Software Defined Networks

Software Defined Networks are currently the most promising researched area in the field of computer networking. Many research implementation is undergoing in making advances in the field of Software Defined networks. The rise of demand for moving from traditional networks to SDNs has given rise to many challenges. Software-defined Networks are continuously advancing, which demands the need to solve the issues of scalability, transmission delays, and packet loss. The larger the network, more the delay as with the increase in the network causes network congestion and transmission delays. In larger networks, single controller architecture will be inefficient to manage the network. To tackle this issue, Software Defined Architecture with multiple controllers has been introduced in the recent research.

Multiple controller SDN architectures will be efficient to manage larger networks, decrease transmission loss and avoid fault tolerance. As the network expands the load on the single controller increases, so it becomes difficult for single controller architecture to efficiently manage the network. Multiple controllers do not help to balance the load between them, it will tackle the network congestion issue by distributing the load between them.

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of Multiple controller SDN architectures in comparison to single controller SDN architecture. The Multiple controller architectures have better load management, less transmission delay, and less packet loss ratio. The multicontroller SDN architecture is a more efficient solution than single controller architecture when it comes to wider networks. In the experiment, we have used POX SDN controller to implement the Software Defined Architecture, mininet[2] as a network emulator to test complex topologies and D-ITG to test the result of intense network traffic on topologies in different SDN architectures.