TY - GEN
T1 - Empirical predictability study of SDN switches
AU - Van Bemten, Amaury
AU - Deric, Nemanja
AU - Varasteh, Amir
AU - Blenk, Andreas
AU - Schmid, Stefan
AU - Kellerer, Wolfgang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 IEEE.
PY - 2019/9
Y1 - 2019/9
N2 - To meet their increasingly stringent dependability requirements, communication networks need to be predictable, both in terms of correctness and performance. In principle, Software-Defined Networks (SDN) enable such more predictable networks, however, these networks still depend the underlying switches. This paper presents an empirical study of the predictability of SDN switches. Our extensive benchmarking of seven hardware OpenFlow switches from four different manufacturers raises several concerns regarding the dependability of these switches. We uncover several incorrect and unpredictable behaviors and performance issues. In particular, we identify unpredictable behaviors related to the management of flows and buffers, and observe that existing quality-of-service mechanisms, such as priority queuing, introduce unexpected overheads. The latter, in turn, can lead to violations of latency guarantees. Based on our insights, we discuss first solutions toward more predictable architectures.
AB - To meet their increasingly stringent dependability requirements, communication networks need to be predictable, both in terms of correctness and performance. In principle, Software-Defined Networks (SDN) enable such more predictable networks, however, these networks still depend the underlying switches. This paper presents an empirical study of the predictability of SDN switches. Our extensive benchmarking of seven hardware OpenFlow switches from four different manufacturers raises several concerns regarding the dependability of these switches. We uncover several incorrect and unpredictable behaviors and performance issues. In particular, we identify unpredictable behaviors related to the management of flows and buffers, and observe that existing quality-of-service mechanisms, such as priority queuing, introduce unexpected overheads. The latter, in turn, can lead to violations of latency guarantees. Based on our insights, we discuss first solutions toward more predictable architectures.
KW - Guarantees
KW - Latency
KW - Measurements
KW - Predictability
KW - Programmable switches
KW - Software-defined networking
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075730959&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ANCS.2019.8901878
DO - 10.1109/ANCS.2019.8901878
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85075730959
T3 - 2019 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2019
BT - 2019 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2019 ACM/IEEE Symposium on Architectures for Networking and Communications Systems, ANCS 2019
Y2 - 24 September 2019 through 25 September 2019
ER -