An Efficient Controller Placement Algorithm using Clustering in Software Defined Networks

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging network paradigm that separates the control plane from data plane and provides programmable network management. The control plane within SDN is responsible for decision-making, while packet forwarding is handled by the data plane based on flow entries defined by the control plane. The placement of controllers is an important research issue that significantly impacts performance of SDN. In this work, we utilize clustering algorithms to group networks into multiple clusters and propose an algorithm for optimal controller placement within each cluster. Initially, using the silhouette score, we determine the optimal number of controllers for various topologies. Additionally, to enhance network performance, we employ the meeting point algorithm to calculate the optimal location for placing the controller within each cluster. We implement the proposed work in the Mininet emulator with POX as the SDN controller. Furthermore, we compare our proposed approach to existing work in terms of throughput, delay, and jitter using six topologies from the Internet Zoo dataset.