Network Security Challenges in SDN Environments

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a revolutionary networking architecture where it has a centralized controller since it separates the control plane and data plane of forwarding elements. In this way, SDN creates a flexible architecture that allows network devices to be configured quickly and easily. Openflow is now the most popular solution for implementing the SDN concept and providing significant flexibility in network flow routing. SDN is exposed to many security threats that will affect the performance of the network Network simulation is a simple and cost-effective technique to see how the network will perform under various operational conditions. The results of the simulation can be used to evaluate and analyze network performance under security threats. In this paper, the SDN scenario model will be developed in OMNeT++ using the INET framework and Openflow protocol. The developed SDN simulation model will be used to create a simulation setup to model security threats in SDN, where a Denial of Service attack (DoS) will be simulated on the Openflow switch and the Openflow controller.