Modelling Software-Defined Networking: Switch Design with Finite Buffer and Priority Queueing

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new network architecture that separates control plane and data plane. SDN switch models in the literature primarily use queueing theory in two distinct categories: (i) single shared buffer for control plane traffic and data plane traffic, and (ii) buffer with two priorities to isolate control plane and data plane traffic. Several research works have independently studied these two buffer sharing mechanism but do not address the tradeoffs between these two buffer sharing mechanisms. The evaluation shows that shared buffer requires approximately up to 85% higher delays to install the flow table entries in the switch and up to 82% extra buffer capacity compared with the priority queueing buffer.