ABSTRACT Software-defined network (SDN) provides a solution for the scalable network framework with decoupled control and data plane. Migrating switches can balance the resource utilization of controllers and improve network performance. Switch migration problem has to date been formulated as a resource utilization maximization problem to address the scalability of the control plane. However, this problem is NP-hard with high-computational complexities and without addressing the security challenges of the control plane. In this paper, we propose a switch migration method, which interprets switch migration as a signature matching problem and is formulated as a 3-D earth mover's distance model to protect strategically important controllers in the network. Considering the scalability, we further propose a heuristic method which is time-efficient and suitable to large-scale networks. Simulation results show that our proposed methods can disguise strategically important controllers by diminishing the difference of traffic load between controllers. Moreover, our proposed methods can significantly relieve the traffic pressure of controllers and prevent saturation attacks. INDEX TERMS Earth mover's distance, load balancing, reconnaissance, saturation attacks, switch migration.
Zhou et al. REF design a switch migration scheme, which interprets switch migration as a matching problem and is transformed as a threedimensional Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) model to protect strategically important controllers in SDN network.
Elastic Switch Migration for Control Plane Load Balancing in SDN
IEEE Access
IEEE Access
Computer Science