SigMA: Signaling Framework for Decentralized Network Management Applications

The management of network infrastructures has become increasingly complex over time, which is mainly attributed to the introduction of new functionality to support emerging services and applications. To address this important issue, research efforts in the last few years focused on developing software-defined networking solutions. While initial work proposed centralized architectures, their scalability limitations have led researchers to investigate a distributed control plane. Controller placement algorithms and mechanisms for building a logically centralized network view are some examples of challenges addressed in this context. A critical issue that requires specific attention concerns the communication between distributed entities involved in decision-making processes. To this end, we propose SigMA, a signaling framework that supports communication between the different entities of a decentralized management and control system. We also define the communication primitives and interfaces involved in such a decentralized environment. The benefits of SigMA are illustrated through three realistic network resource management use cases with different communication requirements. Based on simulation, we demonstrate the flexibility and extensibility of our solution in satisfying these requirements, thus effectively supporting advanced decentralized decision-making processes.