Coordinator controller election algorithm to provide failsafe through load balancing in distributed sdn control plane

Abstract

SDN provides flexibility, centralized control, and cost-cutting. SDN decouples the main two functions of a traditional network viz. packet switching and routing. The switch is responsible to forward packets only without any concern about routing decisions or any security checks in SDN. The control plane is responsible for routing decisions. Distributed SDN solves issues of availability and scalability, which are the weakness of a centralized or single control plane. Fault Tolerance and load balancing are the key features of any network. A brief description of our primary research goal of the proposed DCFT (Distributed Controller Fault Tolerance) model is given here. A major focus is given on a coordinator controller election algorithm to provide failsafe through load balancing in the SDN control plane. Implementation of the said algorithm verified with floodlight controller with and without a coordinator, Implementation results reveals that throughput and communication overhead will be increased with coordinator controller, packet delay (latency) will be decreased with coordinator controller.