SDEFIX — Identifying elephant flows in SDN-based IXP networks

Abstract

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are fundamental blocks of the Internet ecosystem by providing cost-effective connections among multiple autonomous systems (ASes). One of the main management challenges in IXP networks is the management of the so-called elephant flows. Elephant flows, characterized by high throughput and long duration, represent a small fraction of the total flows of an IXP network but have high impact on the overall traffic. A first step in the management of elephant flows is their identification, which becomes more important in SDN-based IXPs that require controllers to have a consistent view of the underlying network to allow fine-grained adjustment. In this paper, we propose, develop, and evaluate a monitoring system to identify elephant flows in an SDN-based IXP network. We demonstrate that our system can assist IXP operators to properly identify elephant flows in an efficient, scalable, and timely manner.