Safe Update of Hybrid SDN Networks
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Authors
Vissicchio, Stefano
Vanbever, Laurent
Cittadini, Luca
Xie, Geoffrey G.
Bonaventure, Olivier
Subjects
Network management
network updates
reconfiguration
hybrid SDN
theory
algorithms
simulations
network updates
reconfiguration
hybrid SDN
theory
algorithms
simulations
Advisors
Date of Issue
2017-06
Date
June 2017
Publisher
IEEE
Language
Abstract
The support for safe network updates, i.e., live modification of device behavior without service disruption, is a critical primitive for current and future networks. Several techniques have been proposed by previous works to implement such a primitive. Unfortunately, existing techniques are not generally applicable to any network architecture, and typically require high overhead e.g., additional memory to guarantee strong consistency i.e., traversal of either initial or final paths, but never a mix of them during the update. In this paper, we deeply study the problem of computing operational sequences to safely and quickly update arbitrary networks. We characterize cases, for which this computation is easy, and revisit previous algorithmic contributions in the new light of our theoretical findings. We also propose and thoroughly evaluate a generic sequence-computation approach, based on two new algorithms that we combine to overcome limitations of prior proposals. Our approach always finds an operational sequence that provably guarantees strong consistency throughout the update, with very limited overhead. Moreover, it can be applied to update networks running any combination of centralized and distributed control-planes, including different families of IGPs, OpenFlow or other SDN protocols, and hybrid SDN networks. Our approach therefore supports a large set of use cases, ranging from traffic engineering in IGP-only or SDN-only networks to incremental SDN roll-out and advanced requirements e.g., per-flow path selection or dynamic network function virtualization in partial SDN deployments.
Type
Article
Description
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2016.2642586
Series/Report No
Department
Computer Science (CS)
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
14 p.
Citation
Vissicchio, Stefano, et al. "Safe update of hybrid SDN networks." IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON) 25.3 (2017): 1649-1662.
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.