Sea Turtle Foraging Optimization-Based Controller Placement with Blockchain-Assisted Intrusion Detection in Software-Defined Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) algorithms are gaining increasing interest and are making networks flexible and agile. The basic idea of SDN is to move the control planes to more than one server's named controllers and limit the data planes to numerous sending network components, enabling flexible and dynamic network management. A distinctive characteristic of SDN is that it can logically centralize the control plane by utilizing many physical controllers. The deployment of the controller-that is, the controller placement problem (CPP)-becomes a vital model challenge. Through the advancements of blockchain technology, data integrity between nodes can be enhanced with no requirement for a trusted third party. Using the latest developments in blockchain technology, this article designs a novel sea turtle foraging optimization algorithm for the controller placement problem (STFOA-CPP) with blockchain-based intrusion detection in an SDN environment. The major intention of the STFOA-CPP technique is the maximization of lifetime, network connectivity, and load balancing with the minimization of latency. In addition, the STFOA-CPP technique is based on the sea turtles' food-searching characteristics of tracking the odour path of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) released from food sources. Moreover, the presented STFOA-CPP technique can adapt with the controller's count mandated and the shift to controller mapping to variable network traffic. Finally, the blockchain can inspect the data integrity, determine significantly malicious input, and improve the robust nature of developing a trust relationship between several nodes in the SDN. To demonstrate the improved performance of the STFOA-CPP algorithm, a wide-ranging experimental analysis was carried out. The extensive comparison study highlighted the improved outcomes of the STFOA-CPP technique over other recent approaches.