Optimized self-healing framework for software defined networks

Abstract

Software defined network (SDN) enables network programmability and provides fine grained control for managing the complex network infrastructure. With the centralized nature of SDN it poses the requirement for failure management at the data plane, control plane and at the centralized controller side. The self-healing attribute of the autonomic network can be combined with SDN to develop a software defined self-healing resilient network. The aim of this paper is to propose a self-healing SDN framework which can optimize the recovery by applying autonomic principles. The proposed work includes a rapid recovery (RR) mechanism to perform an immediate link recovery at the switch level without overburdening the controller. Additionally, it reduces the memory requirement of the switch for storing the backup path flow rules by aggregating all the disrupted flows. We presented the analytical model for calculating the failure recovery time and the backup flow rules required for recovery. Based on the analytical model, RR scheme reduces the total number of backup flow rules for all the disrupted flows of the failed link to a single flow rule.