A Systematic Literature Review on Military Software Defined Networks <s> Basic Evaluation <s> Load balancing is critical in complex naval networks to provide reliable performance by ensuring the system is not over-loaded and by high resource utilization. Load balancing guarantees the stability of a naval ship tactical network in a distributed environment. Tactical networks are highly dynamic due to mission requirements, policies, or environment condition. There is never enough bandwidth for data-intensive military operations. Additional challenges of tactical environments are limited bandwidth, and intermittent connectivity caused by battle space condition. In this paper, we present our approach to create a benchmark to evaluate load balancing with OpenFlow protocol of SDN technology for a Navy scenario. Our results show that SDN technology offers agility and flexibility to configure, and manage the network. <s> BIB001 </s> A Systematic Literature Review on Military Software Defined Networks <s> Basic Evaluation <s> Over the past few years in traditional networks, issues such as lack of orchestration, agility, flexibility, increased demand for scalability, and vendor dependence are of major concern. An innovative concept of Software Defined Networking(SDN) is a possible solution to all these problems which aims at increasing network efficiency and simplifying network management. It includes a physical separation of the control plane and data plane in a network device. The intelligence and control of the network operation such as routing is removed from the network devices and is concentrated in a centralized component called the SDN Controller [10]. This paper demonstrates the implementation of OpenFlow based SDN controller in C language on Visual Studio-IDE. Communication between the switch and controller is captured using Wireshark. Nodes connected to the switch are able to exchange strings, files etc. The current networking issues and their solution in tactical scenarios are discussed using different use cases. <s> BIB002 </s> A Systematic Literature Review on Military Software Defined Networks <s> Basic Evaluation <s> Software-defined networking (SDN) is used commercially to improve network agility and traffic management capability. As deployed and tactical military systems are often constrained by network performance it is vital to quantify the performance impact of the SDN control plane if SDN is to be exploited in this environment. To assess this we identify the key types of messages used in OpenFlow and how their overhead is influenced by network characteristics. This model is validated in a set of simulations using open source SDN implementations. Finally we present potential mitigations for reducing or eliminating these overheads. <s> BIB003 </s> A Systematic Literature Review on Military Software Defined Networks <s> Basic Evaluation <s> This paper reports from ongoing efforts related to trust management in tactical Software Defined Networks (SDN) when used with mobile nodes in a coalition operation. We analyze the problem space and suggests a set of security and contructional requirements, as well as an analysis on how existing technology may contribute to a solution. The proposed architecture serves as a guide for current and future experimentation on trust management and protection in SDN. The paper also reports from experimental investigations into the utility of these technology elements for the present purpose. <s> BIB004
Five articles provided a basic evaluation in respect to tactical, military, and naval networks with main focus on the control layer. Athmiya et al. BIB002 demonstrated and evaluated the implementation of an OpenFlow SDN controller within tactical scenarios, seeking to identify how such implementations can enhance agility, scalability, and network management flexibility for the tactical edge. The article provides a comprehensive presentation of OpenFlow, in terms of overall operation, matching criteria and internal messaging between the controller and the switches. Accordingly, the article briefly describes the Mininet prototyping environment, which is further utilized for the development of an experimental setup, towards verifying the capacity of OpenFlow to satisfy the requirements of the tactical environment. The examined test cases refer to (i) diversion networking, (ii) central policy management for access control lists, and (iii) the distribution of SDN controllers. The article is comprehensive, and promotes further evaluation for providing proof that OpenFlow can be aligned with the requirements of the tactical environment. Dilmaghani and Kwon BIB001 proposed an SDN based approach for load balancing within naval military scenarios. The authors construct an experimental setup using Mininet, and utilize Floodlight as the protocol for the communication among switches and the controller. The experimental setup consist of five WAN (Wide Area Network) switches, which correspond to three ships and two on-shore data centers. Furthermore, the scenario assumes three types of traffic with distinct priorities. The article offers a detailed presentation of the evaluation scenario details, while the results highlight the benefits of corresponding SDN implementations, in terms of network programmability and management automation, but also in terms of load balancing and reliability. Additionally, Anderson  described an investigation into five open-source controllers using a specific set of criteria based on the characteristics of these networks. A qualitative investigation compared the controllers based on their state handling and failure recovery mechanisms, and resulted in the selection of two controllers for further investigation. Further quantitative tests were performed on these two controllers, in order to determine which was more suitable for deployment in an airborne environment. Fonger et al. BIB004 proposed an architecture that serves as a guide for current and future experimentation on trust management and protection in tactical SDN when used with mobile nodes in a coalition operation. However, this work does not discuss thoroughly the security of the information transported through the network, focusing on the protection and separation of different data flows. This separation needs to be robust and reliable, but it does not provide security services on the content of the flows. Finally, Spencer et al. BIB003 identified the key types of messages used in OpenFlow, and how their overhead is influenced by network characteristics in military networks. Furthermore, the authors presented a series of mitigation measures for reducing or eliminating the overheads, some of which are possible to implement within the current SDN standards, while others require further extensions. The authors perform an experimental validation to quantify and confirm their analysis, where the scenario is implemented using Mininet with OpenVSwitch as the switching element, and netem for performing network simulation. Software-defined networking has the potential to offer significant advantages over conventional networks in military networks. However, there are still open issues that need to be evaluated before usage in a production environment: • Evaluation of the SDN control plane performance in large-scale heterogeneous networks, and its ability to respond to failures; • Evaluation/investigation of the number and placement of controllers. A centralized management miles away from the forwarding devices in an operational scenario is challenging, and the number and placement of controllers is a research problem in military networks; • Evaluation of extensions to OpenFlow that include features for fine-grained control of wireless access points in a similar manner to OpenRadio; • Development of a comprehensive methodology to evaluate the performance of SDN load balancers.