BalanceFlow: Controller load balancing for OpenFlow networks
In the discussion about Future Internet, Software Defined Networking (SDN) enabled by OpenFlow, is currently seen as one of the most promising paradigm. While the availability and scalability concerns rises as a single controller could be alleviated by using replicate or distributed controllers, there lacks a flexible mechanism to allow controller load balancing. This paper proposes BalanceFlow, a controller load balancing architecture for OpenFlow networks. By utilizing CONTROLLER X action extension for OpenFlow switches and cross controller communication, one of the controllers, called "super controller" can flexibly tune the flow requests handled by each controller, without introducing unacceptable propagation latencies. Experiments based on real topology show that BalanceFlow can adjust the load of each controller dynamically.
2012 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Intelligence Systems