Load Balancing for Distributed SDN with Harmony Search

Unlike the traditional networking infrastructure, the software defined network (SDN) separates the network control function from the data transmission function. SDN of a large geographical area requires multiple controllers rather than a single centralized one, and controller provisioning has a significant impact on the network performance. In this paper we propose a novel load balancing scheme with switch migration to effectively solve the dynamic controller provisioning problem (DCPP) for SDN. The proposed scheme employs a meta-heuristic approach based on harmony search and K-means clustering of the switches. The proposed scheme is evaluated by computer simulation in terms of load balancing accuracy, and it turns out to be superior to the existing harmony search algorithm.