Programming network via Distributed Control in Software-Defined Networks

Programming a network for innovative services or for function improvements has never been easier using Software-Defined Networking (SDN). However, the programming tasks can also be significantly complicated by the asynchrony of data plane states and complexities of service control states. In order to reduce the complexity for programming a network service in Distributed Control Plane of SDN, we propose a proGRAmming Control (GRACE) layer as a generic solution, which provides two key features, namely, reconfigurability and reusability. Their implementations deal with aforementioned challenges, thus to achieve the consistency of the data plane states and the reusability of the service control states at the distributed controllers. This paper introduces the reconfigurability and reusability with their design goals and their impact on the programmability of DCP. We further use two popular network services, ICN (Information-Centric Networking) and CDN (Content Distribution Networks) to illustrate these concepts. NS-3 simulations and PlanetLab emulations are conducted to show the advantage of using the GRACE layer for ICN and CDN. Results show that the ICN Interest delay is reduced by 19.6% and CDN request delay is reduced by 81% in extremely harsh network conditions.