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A survey of network update in SDN

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Abstract

Network is dynamic and requires update in the operation. However, many confusions and problems can be caused by careless schedule in the update process. Although the problem has been investigated for many years in traditional networks where the control plane is distributed, software defined networking (SDN) brings new opportunities and solutions to this problem by the separation of control and data plane, as well as the centralized control. This paper makes a survey on the problems caused by network update, including forwarding loop, forwarding black hole, link congestion, network policy violation, etc., as well as the state-of-the-art SDN solutions to these problems. Furthermore, we summarize the network configuration strength and discuss the open issues of network update in the SDN paradigm.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 program) (2014CB347800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61522205, 61432002, 61133006, and 61502045), the National High-tech R&D Program of China (863 program) (2013AA013303, 2015AA01A705, and 2015AA016102), EU FP7 Marie Curie Actions project Grant Agreement (the Cleansky project) (607584), ZTE corporation and Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Dan Li, Songtao Wang, Konglin Zhu & Shutao Xia

  2. School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

    Konglin Zhu

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  1. Dan Li
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  2. Songtao Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dan Li.

Additional information

Dan Li is an associate professor in Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University, China. He received his PhD degree in computer science from Tsinghua University in 2007. His research interests include future Internet architecture and data center networking. He is an awardee of the NSFC Excellent Young Scholars Program in 2015.

Songtao Wang received his master degree in system on chip from Southampton University, UK in 2011. Now he is a PhD student in Tsinghua University, China. His research interests include network update and software defined datacenter network.

Konglin Zhu received his master degree in computer science from University of California, Los Angeles, USA in 2009 and his PhD degree in University of Goettingen, Germany in 2014 respectively. He is now an assistant professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China. He is also a visiting scholar at Tsinghua University, China sponored by FP7 CleanSky project. His research interests include network virtualization and vehicular networks.

Shutao Xia received the BS degree in mathematics and the PhD degree in applied mathematics from Nankai University, China in 1992 and 1997, respectively. Since January 2004, he has been with the Graduate School of Shenzhen of Tsinghua University, China, where he is currently a professor. His current research interests include coding theory, information theory and networking.

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Li, D., Wang, S., Zhu, K. et al. A survey of network update in SDN. Front. Comput. Sci. 11, 4–12 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-016-6125-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-016-6125-y

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