Managing NFV using SDN and control theory

Control theory and SDN (Software Defined Networking) are key components for NFV (Network Function Virtualization) deployment. However little has been done to use a control-theoretic approach for SDN and NFV management. In this paper, we describe a use case for NFV management using control theory and SDN. We use the management architecture of RINA (a clean-slate Recursive InterNetwork Architecture) to manage Virtual Network Function (VNF) instances over the GENI testbed. We deploy Snort, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as the VNF. Our network topology has source and destination hosts, multiple IDSes, an Open vSwitch (OVS) and an OpenFlow controller. A distributed management application running on RINA measures the state of the VNF instances and communicates this information to a Proportional Integral (PI) controller, which then provides load balancing information to the OpenFlow controller. The latter controller in turn updates traffic flow forwarding rules on the OVS switch, thus balancing load across the VNF instances. This paper demonstrates the benefits of using such a control-theoretic load balancing approach and the RINA management architecture in virtualized environments for NFV management. It also illustrates that GENI can easily support a wide range of SDN and NFV related experiments

Addressing the Challenges in Federating Edge Resources

This book chapter considers how Edge deployments can be brought to bear in a global context by federating them across multiple geographic regions to create a global Edge-based fabric that decentralizes data center computation. This is currently impractical, not only because of technical challenges, but is also shrouded by social, legal and geopolitical issues. In this chapter, we discuss two key challenges - networking and management in federating Edge deployments. Additionally, we consider resource and modeling challenges that will need to be addressed for a federated Edge.Comment: Book Chapter accepted to the Fog and Edge Computing: Principles and Paradigms; Editors Buyya, Sriram

On load balancing via switch migration in software-defined networking

Switch-controller assignment is an essential task in multi-controller software-defined networking. Static assignments are not practical because network dynamics are complex and difficult to predetermine. Since network load varies both in space and time, the mapping of switches to controllers should be adaptive to sudden changes in the network. To that end, switch migration plays an important role in maintaining dynamic switch-controller mapping. Migrating switches from overloaded to underloaded controllers brings flexibility and adaptability to the network but, at the same time, deciding which switches should be migrated to which controllers, while maintaining a balanced load in the network, is a challenging task. This work presents a heuristic approach with solution shaking to solve the switch migration problem. Shift and swap moves are incorporated within a search scheme. Every move is evaluated by how much benefititwillgivetoboththeimmigrationandoutmigrationcontrollers.Theexperimentalresultsshowthat theproposedapproachisabletooutweighthestate-of-artapproaches,andimprovetheloadbalancingresults up to≈ 14% in some scenarios when compared to the most recent approach. In addition, the results show that the proposed work is more robust to controller failure than the state-of-art methods.Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) - UID/MULTI/00631/2019;info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio