SOFTWARE DEFINED LOAD BALANCING OVER AN OPENFLOW-ENABLED NETWORK

Abstract

In this modern age of the Internet, the amount of data flowing through networking channels has exploded exponentially. The network services and routing mechanism affect the scalability and performance of such networks. Software Defined Networks (SDN) is an upcoming network model which overcomes many challenges faced by traditional approaches. The basic principle of SDN is to separate the control plane and the data plane in network devices such as router and switches. This separation of concern allows a central controller to make the logical decisions by having an overall map of the network. SDN makes the network programmable and agile as the network application is abstracted from the lower level details of data forwarding. OpenFlow allows us to communicate with the data plane directly, gather traffic statistics from network devices and dynamically adjust the rules in OpenFlow enabled switches. Currently load balancers are implemented as specific hardware devices which are expensive, rigid and lead to a single point of failures in the whole network. I propose a software defined load balancing mechanism that increases efficiency by modifying the flow table rules via OpenFlow. This mechanism dynamically distributes the upcoming network traffic flows without disrupting existing connections.