Effects of Linux Scheduling Algorithms on Mininet Network Performance

Abstract

Software Defined Network (SDN) is considered a burgeoning technology in the field of computer networks particularly and in communication technologies in general. A promising architecture of SDN mainly depends on decoupling mechanisms of the control and management plane from the data forwarding plane in network device. Besides, the use of programmable interfaces between network layers. In another word, SDN uses open, flexible, and dynamic architecture that is defined through the use of different software's programming languages. Simulation and emulation network platforms play an important role in studying and evaluating different networks design and performance. Mininet is the most popular SDN platform. This research is concerned with the impacts of operating system scheduling algorithms used by Mininet emulator on network performance with different controllers and topologies types and sizes. It has been noted that network performance under PROC scheduling algorithm was better and more stable than those under CFS or RT scheduling algorithms. As well, when network topology be more complicated, i.e. contains a large number of switches and presence of loops, the network performance is worse than that with simple topology especially, this case is more worse with RT scheduling algorithm