FT-SDN: A Fault-Tolerant Distributed Architecture for Software Defined Network

The traditional Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture is based on single controller in the Control Plane. Therefore, network functioning become highly dependent on the performance of the single controller in the Control Plane, which is undesirable for any reliable application. Despite many advantages of SDN, its deployment in the practical field is restricted since reliability and fault-tolerance capabilities of the system are not satisfactory. To overcome these difficulties of SDN, (FT-SDN) architecture has been proposed. The proposed architecture consists of a simple and effective distributed Control Plane with multiple controllers. FT-SDN uses a synchronized mechanism to periodically update the controller’s state within themselves. In case of failure, FT-SDN has the ability to select another working controller based on the distance and delays among different network entities. The performance of the FT-SDN architecture was examined with respect to different specifications in the presence of faults. Experimentation was done in simulation where results were found to be satisfactory.