On the effect of forwarding table size on SDN network utilization

Abstract

Software Defined Networks (SDNs) are becoming the leading technology behind many traffic engineering solutions, both for backbone and data-center networks, since it allows a central controller to globally plan the path of the flows according to the operator's objective. Nevertheless, networking devices' forwarding table is a limited and expensive resource (e.g., TCAM-based switches) which should thus be considered upon configuring the network. In this paper, we concentrate on satisfying global network objectives, such as maximum flow, in environments where the size of the forwarding table in network devices is limited. We formulate this problem as an (NP-hard) optimization problem and present approximation algorithms for it. We show through extensive simulations that practical use of our algorithms (both in Data Center and backbone scenarios) result in a significant reduction (factor 3) in forwarding table size, while having a small effect on the global objective (maximum flow).