A Hierarchical Distributed Control Plane for Path Computation Scalability in Large Scale Software-Defined Networks

Given the shortcomings of traditional networks, software-defined networking (SDN) is considered as the best solution to deal with the constant growth of mobile data traffic. SDN separates the data plane from the control plane, enabling network scalability, and programmability. Initial SDN deployments promoted a centralized architecture with a single controller managing the entire network. This design has proven to be unsuited for nowadays large-scale networks. Though multi-controller architectures are becoming more popular, they bring new concerns. One critical challenge is how to efficiently perform path computation in large networks considering the substantial computational resources needed. This paper proposes HiDCoP, a distributed high-performance control plane for path computation in large-scale SDNs along with its related solutions. HiDCoP employs a hierarchical structure to distribute the load of path computation among different controllers, reducing therefore the transmission overhead. In addition, it uses node parallelism to accelerate the performance of path computation without generating high control overhead. Simulation results show that HiDCoP outperforms existing schemes in terms of path computation time, end-to-end delay, and transmission overhead.