Patent ID: 10237117

Abstract:
A configuration system for configuring the control-plane of a software-defined network is presented. The configuration system determines an entity-specific group of control-plane functionalities for each of controller entities located in a distributed way in the software-defined network. The control-plane functionalities are suitable for configuring data forwarding network elements, such as routers, to support services to be provided by the software-defined network. The configuration system composes, on the basis of the entity-specific groups, entity-specific portions of control data and transmits the entity-specific portions of the control data to the controller entities so as to configure each controller entity to support the corresponding entity-specific group of the control-plane functionalities. Thus, the control-plane functionalities can be distributed between the controller entities in scalable way for example in accordance with requirements related to the control-plane functionalities and/or a spatial distribution of the needs for different ones of the control-plane functionalities.