Reducing and Balancing Flow Table Entries in Software-Defined Networks

Xuya Jia, Yong Jiang, Zehua Guo, Zhenwei Wu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

23 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) allows flexible and efficient management of networks. However, the limited capacity of flow tables in SDN switches hinders the deployment of SDN. In this paper, we propose a novel routing scheme to improve the efficiency of flow tables in SDNs. To efficiently use the routing scheme, we formulate an optimization problem with the objective to maximize the number of flows in the network, constrained by the limited flow table space in SDN switches. The problem is NP-hard, and we propose the K Similar Greedy Tree (KSGT) algorithm to solve it. We evaluate the performance of KSGT against 'traditional' SDN solutions with real-world topologies and traffic. The results show that, compared to the existing solutions, KSGT can reduce about 60% of flow entries when processing the same amount of flows, and improve about 25% of the successful installation and forwarding flows under the same flow table space.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2016 IEEE 41st Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN 2016
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages575-578
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781509020546
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Dec 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event41st IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN 2016 - Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Duration: 7 Nov 201610 Nov 2016

Publication series

NameProceedings - Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN

Conference

Conference41st IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited Arab Emirates
CityDubai
Period7/11/1610/11/16

Keywords

  • Flow table reuse
  • MPLS
  • Overhead
  • Software-Defined Networking

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