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Varna-based optimization: a novel method for capacitated controller placement problem in SDN

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Abstract

Recently, software defined networking (SDN) is a promising paradigm shift that decouples the control plane from the data plane. It can centrally monitor and control the network through softwarization, i.e., controller. Multiple controllers are a necessity of current SDN based WAN. Placing multiple controllers in an optimum way is known as controller placement problem (CPP). Earlier, solutions of CPP only concentrated on propagation latency but overlooked the capacity of controllers and the dynamic load on switches, which is a significant factor in real networks. In this paper, we develop a novel optimization algorithm named varna-based optimization (VBO) and use it to solve CPP. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to minimize the total average latency of SDN along with the implementation of TLBO and Jaya algorithms to solve CPP for all twelve possible scenarios. Our experimental results show that TLBO outperforms PSO, and VBO outperforms TLBO and Jaya algorithms in all scenarios for all topologies.

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Correspondence to Ashutosh Kumar Singh.

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Ashutosh Kumar Singh obtained his BTech degree in Information Technology from Uttar Pradesh Technical University Lucknow, India in 2011 and MTech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Gwalior, India in 2014. Now he is currently a PhD student in the Department of CSE, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, India. He has a membership of IEEE and ACM. His research interest includes network optimization and software defined networking.

Shashank Srivastava obtained his PhD degree at Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad, India in 2014. He is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of CSE, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, India. He possesses an experience of more than six years in the field of teaching and research. He has published various research papers in the area of network and security. At present he is supervising five PhD students in the field of software defined networking (SDN), named data networking (NDN), network flow optimization and security. He is having the Membership of IEEE, ACM, CSI, and CRSI. His areas of expertise are SDN, NDN, information security, and future internet technologies.

Saurabh Maurya is a software engineer in a private company at Gurgaon, India. He received his MTech degree in software engineering from Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, India in 2017. His current research interests include machine learning, data analytics, optimization, and mathematical modeling.

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Singh, A.K., Maurya, S. & Srivastava, S. Varna-based optimization: a novel method for capacitated controller placement problem in SDN. Front. Comput. Sci. 14, 143402 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-018-7277-8

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