DISCO: Distributed SDN controllers in a multi-domain environment

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is now envisioned for Wide Area Networks (WAN) and deployed constrained networks. Such networks require a resilient, scalable and easily extensible SDN control plane. In this paper, we propose DISCO, a DIstributed SDN COntrol plane able to cope with the distributed and heterogeneous nature of modern overlay networks and deployed networks. A DISCO controller manages its own network domain, communicates with other DISCO controllers to provide end-to-end network services and share aggregated network-wide information. This east-west communication is based on a lightweight and highly manageable control channel which can self-adapt to network conditions.