Flow Installation Mechanisms in SDN

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has developed tremendously in the recent years. This paper addresses different flow installation mechanisms. The idea of a programmable network which is the foundation of SDN ensures dynamic network management by separating the control plane from data and management planes. In SDN the control plane resides in SDN Controller, which is responsible for the installation of flows on the data plane. Whenever a flow enters into an SDN switch, flow tables are generated for those flows and installed at data plane from the control plane. These flows have their own properties because of their relevant protocols which are attached to them. A flow consists of a matching pattern, actions, and counter. Based on the respective flow, data communication takes place. This paper investigates three kinds of flow installation mechanisms, reactive, proactive and hybrid. Based on these three flow installation mechanisms, we have analysed the performance of SDN by using different performance metrics. We have used the Mininet and POX controller to evaluate the performance analysis in Ubuntu and Windows-based environments. Finally, we have drawn conclusions