Adaptive Optimization for Hybrid Network Control Planes
Sarah Abdallah, Ayman Kayssi, Imad H. Elhajj, Ali Chehab · 2018
Hybrid Networks, defined as networks that include both SDN and IP nodes, were considered as a natural consequence of the incremental deployment of SDN in the current all-IP world. However, under some circumstances, the centralized control plane of SDN offers advantages over the traditional distributed one. This drove our work as we design a hybrid network in which each node adaptively switches its control state between centralized and distributed given the prevailing network conditions. The proposed optimization problem delivered the expected network behavior; the network was fully centralized when conditions were favorable for full centralization, and it was fully distributed when conditions favored full distributivity. For random conditions, we were able to capture the behavior of network nodes with time and with different decision thresholds.