Load balancing for multiple controllers in SDN based on switches group

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) develops a centralized control plane to manage the whole network, but the traditional centralized control plane suffers from the issues of reliability and scalability. Although some methods solves the issues, they do not balance load among controllers. In this paper, we propose a load balancing mechanism based on switches group for multiple controllers. The mechanism not only balances the load among controllers, but also solves the load oscillation and improves time efficiency. Experiments based on floodlight show that our mechanism can improve network balancing and the time efficiency, at same time, avoid load oscillation problem among controllers.