IGP-as-a-backup for robust SDN networks

Abstract

One of the main concerns on SDN is relative to its ability to quickly react to network failures, while limiting both the control-plane overhead and the additional forwarding state kept by data-plane devices. Despite its practical importance, this concern is often overlooked in OpenFlow-based proposals. In this paper, we propose a new architecture, called IBSDN, in which a distributed routing protocol flanks OpenFlow to improve network robustness, reaction to failures, and controller scalability. In deeply exploring this idea, we complement our architecture with data-plane triggered mechanisms that improve its efficiency. We prove that the resulting solution ensures robustness for any combination of topological failures, and quickly reduces the path stretch. Finally, experimenting with a prototype implementation, we show that our approach is practical and overcomes the main limitations of previous work.