Learning the optimal synchronization rates in distributed SDN control architectures

Abstract

Since the early development of Software-DefinedNetwork (SDN) technology, researchers have been concernedwith the idea of physical distribution of the control plane to ad-dress scalability and reliability challenges of centralized designs.However, having multiple controllers managing the networkwhile maintaining a “logically-centralized” network view bringsadditional challenges. One such challenge is how to coordinatethe management decisions made by the controllers which isusually achieved by disseminating synchronization messages ina peer-to-peer manner. While there exist many architecturesand protocols to ensure synchronized network views and drivecoordination among controllers, there is no systematic method-ology for deciding the optimal frequency (or rate) of messagedissemination. In this paper, we fill this gap by introducingthe SDN synchronization problem: how often to synchronize thenetwork views for each controller pair. We consider two differentobjectives; first, the maximization of the number of controllerpairs that are synchronized, and second, the maximization of theperformance of applications of interest which may be affectedby the synchronization rate. Using techniques from knapsackoptimization and learning theory, we derive algorithms withprovable performance guarantees for each objective. Evaluationresults demonstrate significant benefits over baseline schemes thatsynchronize all controller pairs at equal rate.