Exploiting ICN for flexible management of software-defined networks

Abstract

Networks are becoming increasingly complex and service providers incorporate additional functionality in the network to protect, manage and improve service performance. Software Defined Networking (SDN) seeks to manage the network with the help of a (logically) centralized control plane. We observe that current SDN solutions pre-translate policy (what) into forwarding rules at specific switches (where). We argue that this choice limits the dynamicity, flexibility and reliability that a software based network could provide. Information Centric Networking (ICN) shifts the focus of networks away from being predominantly location oriented communication environments. We believe ICN can significantly improve the flexibility for network management. In this paper, we focus on one of the problems of network management -- service chaining -- the steering of flows through the different network functions needed, before it is delivered to the destination. We propose Function-Centric Service Chaining (FCSC), a solution that exploits ICN to provide flexibility in managing networks that utilize virtualization to dynamically place functions in the network as required. We use a real-world topology to compare the performance of FCSC and a more ``traditional'' SDN solution. We show that FCSC reacts to failures with fewer packet drops, adapts to new middleboxes more quickly, and maintains less state in the network.