Security and Performance Evaluation of Software Defined Network Controllers Against Distributed Denial of Service Attack

Software-Defined Network (SDN) has pioneered the era of a programmable network where it defines control plane and data plane which become two distinct cores. The technology bolsters the concept of logical centralization by eradicating the concept of individually programmed devices and network virtualization. The control plane acts as a controller that directs the activities and configurations applied within a network. SDN is not open source however the SDN controller is an open-source application. All controllers mentioned possess distinct pros and cons depending on the SDN environment. One of the most threatening flaws SDN exposed to is Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). It is because once a controller is attacked the whole network might collapse. To explore the resilience proficiency of SDN controllers towards DDoS attacks, researchers performed a security assessment by evaluating controllers’ performance against DDoS attacks. The experiment measured 5 network parameters against the 6 most widely used SDN controllers. Finally, a thorough analysis is done on the obtained results that are graphically presented. The conclusion is drawn ranking the controllers based on the capabilities of handling DDoS attack events and their reaction.