LineSwitch

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new networking architecture that aims to provide better decoupling between network control (control plane) and data forwarding functionalities (data plane). This separation introduces several benefits, such as a directly programmable and (virtually) centralized network control. However, researchers showed that the required communication channel between the control and data plane of SDN creates a potential bottleneck in the system, introducing new vulnerabilities.Indeed, this behavior could be exploited to mount powerful attacks, such as the control plane saturation attack, that can severely hinder the performance of the whole network.