MACS: deep reinforcement learning based SDN controller synchronization policy design
File(s)1909.09063v1.pdf (769.76 KB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
In distributed software-defined networks (SDN), multiple physical SDN controllers, each managing a network domain, are implemented to balance centralised control, scalability, and reliability requirements. In such networking paradigms, controllers synchronize with each other, in attempts to maintain a logically centralised network view. Despite the presence of various design proposals for distributed SDN controller architectures, most existing works only aim at eliminating anomalies arising from the inconsistencies in different controllers' network views. However, the performance aspect of controller synchronization designs with respect to given SDN applications are generally missing. To fill this gap, we formulate the controller synchronization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) and apply reinforcement learning techniques combined with deep neural networks (DNNs) to train a smart, scalable, and fine-grained controller synchronization policy, called the Multi-Armed Cooperative Synchronization (MACS), whose goal is to maximise the performance enhancements brought by controller synchronizations. Evaluation results confirm the DNN's exceptional ability in abstracting latent patterns in the distributed SDN environment, rendering significant superiority to MACS-based synchronization policy, which are 56% and 30% performance improvements over ONOS and greedy SDN controller synchronization heuristics.
Date Issued
2019-10-31
Date Acceptance
2019-10-01
Citation
2019 IEEE 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORK PROTOCOLS (IEEE ICNP), 2019, pp.1-11
ISSN
1092-1648
Publisher
IEEE COMPUTER SOC
Start Page
1
End Page
11
Journal / Book Title
2019 IEEE 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORK PROTOCOLS (IEEE ICNP)
Copyright Statement
© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
Sponsor
IBM United Kingdom Ltd
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000556143800004&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Grant Number
4603317662
Source
27th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (IEEE ICNP)
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Telecommunications
NETWORKS
Publication Status
Published
Start Date
2019-10-07
Finish Date
2019-10-10
Coverage Spatial
Chicago, IL
Date Publish Online
2019-10-31