The effects of DoS attacks on ODL and POX SDN controllers

The use of Software Defined Network (SDN) in recently networking architecture has brought tremendous advantage in computer networking technology. Administrative issues such as routing, security and load balancing can be centralized and automated in SDN controllers. Controllers have been an integral part of the SDN architecture enabling intelligent networking. However, because all the packets are transmitted to the controller, any flooded packet from an attacker who gets access to SDN network may lead to Denial of Service (DoS) attack. In this paper, the effect of DoS attack on bandwidth of two communicating hosts in SDN network for Opendaylight (ODL) and POX controllers was investigate. We observed that the bandwidth was reduced as attack increases and the response time was also too high. We also find out that, even after a flow table has been installed in switch, it was impossible for it to be reinstalled again if a flow timeout has been reached due to a controller handling too many packet-in events and error notification from the switches.