Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures
Interest in hierarchical Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controllers is growing recently due to their ability to address the challenges associated with the SDN paradigm, such as responsiveness and scalability. This design enables efficient domain control separation, which uses different child inst...
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IEEE
2025-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Access |
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| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10833646/ |
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| author | Alessandro Pacini Davide Scano Andrea Sgambelluri Luca Valcarenghi Alessio Giorgetti |
| author_facet | Alessandro Pacini Davide Scano Andrea Sgambelluri Luca Valcarenghi Alessio Giorgetti |
| author_sort | Alessandro Pacini |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Interest in hierarchical Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controllers is growing recently due to their ability to address the challenges associated with the SDN paradigm, such as responsiveness and scalability. This design enables efficient domain control separation, which uses different child instances to manage large-scale networks. Parent controller computational resources can be dedicated to cross-domain decision making, exploiting network views provided by its children. In this context, the correctness of the process fully relies on the network view synchronization mechanism, which should be fast and resilient. This paper presents a hybrid synchronization model combining a hierarchical design with established resilient cluster mechanisms. In this way, high-level control over large-scale networks can be guaranteed even with failures affecting every level of the management plane. Specifically, two applications are developed for the ONOS controller to share topology events using low-latency channels from child clusters to parent clusters. The performance of both applications is measured under different cluster configurations, topology sizes and number of generated topology updates. The results show that the proposed approach offers high performance while being fully compliant with the platform for which it is designed. This makes the solution easily extendable to heterogeneous child controllers. In fact, events are propagated from children to parents using gRPC, achieving end-to-end latency of less than 10ms under normal conditions and 40-60ms under high-rate event conditions. Consistency of network views is also guaranteed by strong event ordering and delivery mechanisms. Failures are handled seamlessly at both cluster levels (i.e. parent and child controllers) with a maximum synchronization delay of 2 seconds, which is quickly recovered. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-f8d6b81295d04c4a9f5658f90a927908 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2169-3536 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Access |
| spelling | doaj-art-f8d6b81295d04c4a9f5658f90a9279082025-01-21T00:02:11ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-01139032904610.1109/ACCESS.2025.352722410833646Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN ArchitecturesAlessandro Pacini0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5092-6061Davide Scano1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3049-215XAndrea Sgambelluri2Luca Valcarenghi3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6695-5032Alessio Giorgetti4https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5017-1500TeCIP Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, ItalyTeCIP Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, ItalyTeCIP Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, ItalyTeCIP Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, ItalyDepartment of Information Engineering, University of Pisa, Pisa, ItalyInterest in hierarchical Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controllers is growing recently due to their ability to address the challenges associated with the SDN paradigm, such as responsiveness and scalability. This design enables efficient domain control separation, which uses different child instances to manage large-scale networks. Parent controller computational resources can be dedicated to cross-domain decision making, exploiting network views provided by its children. In this context, the correctness of the process fully relies on the network view synchronization mechanism, which should be fast and resilient. This paper presents a hybrid synchronization model combining a hierarchical design with established resilient cluster mechanisms. In this way, high-level control over large-scale networks can be guaranteed even with failures affecting every level of the management plane. Specifically, two applications are developed for the ONOS controller to share topology events using low-latency channels from child clusters to parent clusters. The performance of both applications is measured under different cluster configurations, topology sizes and number of generated topology updates. The results show that the proposed approach offers high performance while being fully compliant with the platform for which it is designed. This makes the solution easily extendable to heterogeneous child controllers. In fact, events are propagated from children to parents using gRPC, achieving end-to-end latency of less than 10ms under normal conditions and 40-60ms under high-rate event conditions. Consistency of network views is also guaranteed by strong event ordering and delivery mechanisms. Failures are handled seamlessly at both cluster levels (i.e. parent and child controllers) with a maximum synchronization delay of 2 seconds, which is quickly recovered.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10833646/ClusterefficientgRPChierarchicalhybridONOS |
| spellingShingle | Alessandro Pacini Davide Scano Andrea Sgambelluri Luca Valcarenghi Alessio Giorgetti Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures IEEE Access Cluster efficient gRPC hierarchical hybrid ONOS |
| title | Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures |
| title_full | Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures |
| title_fullStr | Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures |
| title_full_unstemmed | Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures |
| title_short | Hybrid-Hierarchical Synchronization for Resilient Large-Scale SDN Architectures |
| title_sort | hybrid hierarchical synchronization for resilient large scale sdn architectures |
| topic | Cluster efficient gRPC hierarchical hybrid ONOS |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10833646/ |
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