Standardization for Evaluating Software-Defined Networking Controllers

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging network architecture, centralized in the SDN controller entity, that decouples the control plane from the data plane. This controller-based solution allows programmability, and dynamic network reconfigurations, providing decision taking with global knowledge of the network. Currently, there are more than thirty SDN controllers with different features, such as communication protocol version, programming language, and architecture. Beyond that, there are also many studies about controller performance with the goal to identify the best one. However, some conclusions have been unjust because benchmark tests did not follow the same methodology, or controllers were not in the same category. Therefore, a standard benchmark methodology is essential to compare controllers fairly. The standardization can clarify and help us to understand the real behavior and weaknesses of an SDN controller. The main goal of this work-in-progress is to show existing benchmark methodologies, bringing a discussion about the need SDN controller benchmark standardization.