Will SDN be part of 5G?

For many, this is no longer a valid question and the case is considered settled with SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking/Network Function Virtualization) providing the inevitable innovation enablers solving many outstanding management issues regarding 5G. However, given the monumental task of softwarization of radio access network (RAN) while 5G is just around the corner and some companies have started unveiling their 5G equipment already, the concern is very realistic that we may only see some point solutions involving SDN technology instead of a fully SDN-enabled RAN. This survey paper identifies all important obstacles in the way and looks at the state of the art of the relevant solutions. This survey is different from the previous surveys on SDN-based RAN as it focuses on the salient problems and discusses solutions proposed within and outside SDN literature. Our main focus is on fronthaul, backward compatibility, supposedly disruptive nature of SDN deployment, business cases and monetization of SDN related upgrades, latency of general purpose processors (GPP), and additional security vulnerabilities, softwarization brings along to the RAN. We have also provided a summary of the architectural developments in SDN-based RAN landscape as not all work can be covered under the focused issues. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on the state of the art of SDN-based RAN and clearly points out the gaps in the technology.Comment: 33 pages, 10 figure

OFLoad: An OpenFlow-based dynamic load balancing strategy for datacenter networks

The latest tremendous growth in the Internet traffic has determined the entry into a new era of mega-datacenters, meant to deal with this explosion of data traffic. However this big data with its dynamically changing traffic patterns and flows might result in degradations of the application performance eventually affecting the network operators’ revenue. In this context there is a need for an intelligent and efficient network management system that makes the best use of the available bisection bandwidth abundance to achieve high utilization and performance. This paper proposes OFLoad, an OpenFlow-based dynamic load balancing strategy for datacenter networks that enables the efficient use of the network resources capacity. A real experimental prototype is built and the proposed solution is compared against other solutions from the literature in terms of load-balancing. The aim of OFLoad is to enable the instant configuration of the network by making the best use of the available resources at the lowest cost and complexity

OFLoad: An OpenFlow-based dynamic load balancing strategy for datacenter networks

The latest tremendous growth in the Internet traffic has determined the entry into a new era of mega-datacenters, meant to deal with this explosion of data traffic. However this big data with its dynamically changing traffic patterns and flows might result in degradations of the application performance eventually affecting the network operators’ revenue. In this context there is a need for an intelligent and efficient network management system that makes the best use of the available bisection bandwidth abundance to achieve high utilization and performance. This paper proposes OFLoad, an OpenFlow-based dynamic load balancing strategy for datacenter networks that enables the efficient use of the network resources capacity. A real experimental prototype is built and the proposed solution is compared against other solutions from the literature in terms of load-balancing. The aim of OFLoad is to enable the instant configuration of the network by making the best use of the available resources at the lowest cost and complexity

An SDN-based solution for horizontal auto-scaling and load balancing of transparent VNF clusters

© 2021 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)This paper studies the problem of the dynamic scaling and load balancing of transparent virtualized network functions (VNFs). It analyzes different particularities of this problem, such as loop avoidance when performing scaling-out actions, and bidirectional flow affinity. To address this problem, a software-defined networking (SDN)-based solution is implemented consisting of two SDN controllers and two OpenFlow switches (OFSs). In this approach, the SDN controllers run the solution logic (i.e., monitoring, scaling, and load-balancing modules). According to the SDN controllers instructions, the OFSs are responsible for redirecting traffic to and from the VNF clusters (i.e., load-balancing strategy). Several experiments were conducted to validate the feasibility of this proposed solution on a real testbed. Through connectivity tests, not only could end-to-end (E2E) traffic be successfully achieved through the VNF cluster, but the bidirectional flow affinity strategy was also found to perform well because it could simultaneously create flow rules in both switches. Moreover, the selected CPU-based load-balancing method guaranteed an average imbalance below 10% while ensuring that new incoming traffic was redirected to the least loaded instance without requiring packet modification. Additionally, the designed monitoring function was able to detect failures in the set of active members in near real-time and active new instances in less than a minute. Likewise, the proposed auto-scaling module had a quick response to traffic changes. Our solution showed that the use of SDN controllers along with OFS provides great flexibility to implement different load-balancing, scaling, and monitoring strategies.Postprint (published version