Performance Comparison of a SDN Network between Cloud-Based and Locally Hosted SDN Controllers

In a SDN network model, the robustness, scalability and reliability requirement of the control plane makes it an ideal candidate for being hosted on a cloud infrastructure. In addition, the control plane performs large volume of data processing from packet headers to network monitoring data in order to provide adequate level of QoS to the traffic. The realization of a cloud based SDN networking approach is predominantly dependent on the performance of the SDN controllers on the cloud environment. This paper presents a comparative study of the performance of a SDN network between a locally hosted SDN controller within the enterprise with a cloud based remote controller. Since a wide range of SDN controllers are available in the market with different levels of functionalities, performance and complexities, the analysis is validated by comparing the results across three different types of controllers. Furthermore, the impact of the network topology on the performance of the controllers is further validated by comparing the performance across two different topologies. In addition, a comparative performance analysis of the throughput and a theoretical evaluation of the controllers are also presented.