Deployable SDN architecture for network applications: an investigative survey

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is acclaimed as the future of networking as it provides disaggregation between software and hardware and enables a central point of control over the entire network. Many network applications such as load balancers, IPv4-IPv6 converters, VMs, IDS and IPS systems can be realised through SDN deployments. Implementing an SDN solution for the aforementioned network applications would guarantee better performance. As part of this survey, research papers have been reviewed to understand various network applications, their shortcomings in the current deployments and a corresponding proposed SDN solution to tackle these shortcomings. Accordingly, proposals have been made with respect to the deployment strategies of these SDN network applications. The three approaches to deploy SDN solutions are: the rip and replace model, the overlay model and the hybrid model. The main focus of this paper is to propose the best model out of the three models for an SDN deployment for each of the discussed network applications.