Multi-path load balancing for SDN data plane

Abstract

Networks have become an important feature of our day-to-day to life and therefore, user experience is an imperative goal to be achieved by network operators. Load balancing is a method of improving network performance, availability, minimizing delays and avoiding network congestion. In this paper, we study dynamic load balancing to improve network performance and reduce network response time. The load balancer is applied to OpenFlow SDN network’s data plane with Opendaylight as the controller. The flexibility of the load balancer is tested by using it on two different network topologies. Results show that the load balancer can improve the overall performance of the network and reduce delay. The main contribution of this work is a load balancing mechanism for SDN centralized controller environments which can be employed at any point in time in a network, for example, before network failure or after link failure, to avoid data plane congestion and link overloading.