Enhancing Security and Robustness for SDN-Enabled Cloud Networks

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking is an emerging network architecture which promises to solve the limitations associated with current cloud computing systems based on traditional network. The main idea behind SDN is to separate control plane from networking devices, thereby providing a centralized control layer integrable to cloud-based infrastructure. The integration of SDN and Cloud Computing brings an immense benefits to network deployment and management, however, this model still faces many critical challenges with regards to availability, scalability and security. In this study, we present a security and robustness SDN-Enabled Cloud model using OpenStack and OpenDaylight. In particular, we design and implement a security clustering-based SDN Controller for monitoring and managing cloud networking, and a hardware platform to accelerate packet processing in virtual switches. We evaluate our proposed model on a practical cloud testbed consisting of several physical and virtual nodes. The experiment results show that the SDN controller cluster significantly improve robustness for the network even in case of being attacked by abnormal network traffic; while the hardware-accelerated switches can be operated in highperformance and well-adapted to the cloud environment.