A survey of network update in SDN

Abstract

Network is dynamic and requires update in the operation. However, many confusions and problems can be caused by careless schedule in the update process. Although the problem has been investigated for many years in traditional networks where the control plane is distributed, software defined networking (SDN) brings new opportunities and solutions to this problem by the separation of control and data plane, as well as the centralized control. This paper makes a survey on the problems caused by network update, including forwarding loop, forwarding black hole, link congestion, network policy violation, etc., as well as the state-of-the-art SDN solutions to these problems. Furthermore, we summarize the network configuration strength and discuss the open issues of network update in the SDN paradigm.

Keywords

software defined network / network update / forwarding loop / forwarding black hole / link congestion / network policy violation

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