A Survey on Software-Defined Networking

TLDR

Emerging mega‑trends such as mobile, social, cloud, and big data are driving new Internet challenges that require ubiquitous access, high bandwidth, and dynamic management, and software‑defined networking—characterized by decoupled control and data planes and programmability—has been proposed as a promising solution to meet these demands. This paper surveys the latest developments in software‑defined networking. The survey defines SDN by its decoupled control and data planes, describes its three‑layer architecture—infra, control, and application—illustrates each layer with current research, and reviews the de‑facto SDN implementation OpenFlow. The authors conclude by outlining several open research challenges in SDN.

Abstract

Emerging mega-trends (e.g., mobile, social, cloud, and big data) in information and communication technologies (ICT) are commanding new challenges to future Internet, for which ubiquitous accessibility, high bandwidth, and dynamic management are crucial. However, traditional approaches based on manual configuration of proprietary devices are cumbersome and error-prone, and they cannot fully utilize the capability of physical network infrastructure. Recently, software-defined networking (SDN) has been touted as one of the most promising solutions for future Internet. SDN is characterized by its two distinguished features, including decoupling the control plane from the data plane and providing programmability for network application development. As a result, SDN is positioned to provide more efficient configuration, better performance, and higher flexibility to accommodate innovative network designs. This paper surveys latest developments in this active research area of SDN. We first present a generally accepted definition for SDN with the aforementioned two characteristic features and potential benefits of SDN. We then dwell on its three-layer architecture, including an infrastructure layer, a control layer, and an application layer, and substantiate each layer with existing research efforts and its related research areas. We follow that with an overview of the de facto SDN implementation (i.e., OpenFlow). Finally, we conclude this survey paper with some suggested open research challenges.