Parallel Simulation and Virtual-Machine-Based Emulation of Software-Defined Networks

The emerging software-defined networking (SDN) technology decouples the control plane from the data plane in a computer network with open and standardized interfaces, and hence opens up the network designers’ options and ability to innovate. The wide adoption of SDN in industry has motivated the dev...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACM transactions on modeling and computer simulation 2015-12, Vol.26 (1), p.1-27
Main Authors: Jin, Dong, Nicol, David M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Computer networks
Computer simulation
Controllers
Design engineering
Networks
Planes
Synchronization
Transaction processing
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Summary:The emerging software-defined networking (SDN) technology decouples the control plane from the data plane in a computer network with open and standardized interfaces, and hence opens up the network designers’ options and ability to innovate. The wide adoption of SDN in industry has motivated the development of large-scale, high-fidelity testbeds for evaluation of systems that incorporate SDN. In this article, we develop a framework to support OpenFlow-based SDN simulation and distributed emulation, by leveraging our prior work on a hybrid network testbed with a parallel network simulator and a virtual-machine-based emulation system. We show how to exploit typical SDN controller behaviors to handle performance issues caused by the centralized controller in parallel discrete-event simulation. In particular, we develop an asynchronous synchronization algorithm for passive SDN controllers and design a two-level architecture for active SDN controllers. We evaluate the system performance, showing good scalability. Finally, we present a case study, using the testbed, to evaluate network verification applications in an SDN-based data center network.
ISSN:1049-3301
1558-1195
DOI:10.1145/2834116