An SDN Solution for Performance Improvement in Dedicated Wide-Area Networks

Technology has shaped numerous artefacts to get rid of manual, routine and laborious tasks. However, for this to transpire it is requirement for the next-generation networks to be fast, scalable, reliable and cost effective. Fascinatingly, Software defined networking (SDN) helps in distributing network capacity more effectively, dynamically adjusting to changeable demands, and managing failure more rapidly. We propose an SDN-based overlay solution for the existing traditional Wide Area Networks (WAN) environment, targeting provisioning flexibility and control in case of network failures, through a distributed SDN network overlay and edge SDN devices. The goal was to facilitate transition to SDN in developing economies through adoption of SDN while retaining legacy infrastructure. We present an SDN overlay on top of the existing WAN using the South African National Research Network (SANReN) network as a use case. We conducted an evaluation to ascertain which controller is suitable for the proposed WAN network overlay by examining the controller's highest throughput and lowest latency in relation to WAN as our use case. ONOS outshined the other three controller (Ryu, Floodlight and OpenDayLight) and was suitable for the implementation of proposed network solution. We implemented the proposed SDN-overlay on the WAN setup using SANReN topology to test the performance. The results showed improvements in the network performance when distributed control and edge nodes placement were implemented.