An SDN-based cloud computing architecture and its mathematical model

Software-defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as the dominant programmable network architecture that separates the control plane from the data plane. SDN allows the network administrators and data centers to efficiently and flexibly manage their networking equipment using software that runs on external servers. SDN adopts OpenFLow protocol to communicate between network switch and controller. In this paper, we first establish a SDN-based cloud computing environment via open source OpenFLow switch and controller packages. Thereafter, we extend the functionality of OpenFLow controller to provide load balancing, power-saving, and monitoring mechanisms. To verify the feasibility of our architecture, we also develop a queueing model for SDN and calculate its analytical solution for the steady-state probabilities. The experimental results show that SDN-based environment can provide QoS guaranteed cloud computing services.