ConForm: In-Band Control Flows Self-establishment with Integrated Topology Discovery to SDN-Based Networks

Abstract

From the very beginning, the research in the SDN area has been concentrated upon exploring possibilities and evolve control plane programmability. Only recently, research revealed several limitations related to the data plane. As a consequence, begin to emerge several proposals to improve data plane programmability and flexibility. On the other hand, questions related to autonomic networking continues to evolve as since always a design target to SDN. In this sense, foreseeing that future networks will be fully programmable at both control and data planes, supporting in this way challenge management functions, this paper presents a new protocol to self-establishment of in-band control flows integrated to topology discovery to SDN-based networks, actuating at layer-2 and independent of any other protocol. The protocol has been formally specified and a simulation developed in the OMNeT++ platform demonstrated that the protocol scale properly in terms of the network size.