A collaborative model for routing in multi-domains OpenFlow networks

OpenFlow is an innovative network architecture which decouples control plane and data plane, allowing researchers the ability to program their networks, control the behaviour of network switches for their experiments. However, current OpenFlow architecture relies completely on the use of a centralized controller to manage all switches connecting to it in the network. For networks with large number of switches, depending on a controller to manage all switches in the network becomes unfeasible. Thus allowing distributed multiple controllers in managing OpenFlow network is an appropriate solution for OpenFlow scalability. Current OpenFlow support allows deploying multi-controllers networks in which each controller is responsible for operating each smaller domain in the network, however there is currently no mechanism for these controllers to cooperate with the each other. As a result, the controllers cannot effectively process cross-domain packets. This paper proposes building a collaborative model for multi-domains OpenFlow networks that allows different network domains to collaborate with each other in an efficient way. In addition, a routing solution is proposed based on the model to achieve higher network performance.