Decentralized SDN Control Plane for a Distributed Cloud-Edge Infrastructure: A Survey

Abstract

Today's emerging needs (Internet of Things applications, Network Function Virtualization services, Mobile Edge computing, etc.) are challenging the classic approach of deploying a few large data centers to provide cloud services. A massively distributed Cloud-Edge architecture could better fit these new trends' requirements and constraints by deploying on-demand infrastructure services in Point-of-Presences within backbone networks. In this context, a key feature is establishing connectivity among several resource managers in charge of operating, each one a subset of the infrastructure. After explaining the networking management challenges related to distributed Cloud-Edge infrastructures, this article surveys and analyzes the characteristics and limitations of existing technologies in the Software Defined Network field that could be used to provide the inter-site connectivity feature. We also introduce Kubernetes, the new de facto container orchestrator platform, and analyze its use in the proposed context. This survey is concluded by providing a discussion about some research directions in the field of SDN applied to distributed Cloud-Edge infrastructures' management.