M.Sc Student | Saat Efi |
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Subject | The Impact of Using Time in Software Defined Networks |
Department | Department of Electrical Engineering | Supervisor | Professor Yoram Moses |
Full Thesis text | ![]() |
Network
topology scale and the demand for network services increased throughout the
years. This trend increases the complexity of performing network maintenance
and configuration tasks. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new approach to
computer networking that provides simple network management by the abstraction
of higher level functionality.
SDN
introduces challenges in terms of consistency and scalability. Updates are
executed over the network frequently and should be performed consistently while
minimizing the overhead. Moreover, as the network size increases, the need for
network update procedures that allow scalability arises. We introduce a
time-triggered approach to performing network updates. We demonstrate that our
update approach provides lower overhead, shorter update duration, and improved
scalability, all without compromising consistency.
After
introducing the timed consistent network updates approach and demonstrating
that time is a powerful abstraction for coordinating network updates, we
present a time-based tag-free (TBTF) approach
that allows to perform consistent network updates without using version tags.
Time-based
updates provide high certainty about an update’s execution time. Therefore, we
can schedule update procedures with a different order of phases than untimed
approaches allow. TBTF enables us to facilitate this
advantage. The result is an update procedure that does not require duplicate
sets of rules. Old rules can be deleted immediately once their replacement is
enabled.