Generation and collection of data for normal and conflicting flows in software defined network flow table

Abstract

In terms of network simplification and regulation, software defined networking (SDN) is a new form of infrastructure that offers greater adaptability and flexibility. SDN, however, is an invention that is logically centralized. In addition, the optimization of the control plane and data plane in SDN has become an area deserving of more attention. The flow in OpenFlow has been one of the essential parameters in the SDN standards, in which every individual flow includes packet matching fields, flow priority, separate counters, instructions for packet forwarding, flow timeouts and a cookie. This research work is conducted to generate and collect flows from the OpenFlow switch in two scenarios; normal flows and when conflict policy rules are enforced in the network. In this article, throughput is used as a performance metric to evaluate the impact of flow conflict on two protocols, transmission control protocol (TCP) and the user datagram protocol (UDP). During the simulation of the SDN OpenFlow network, the metrics are tested using MININET. The results reveals that the existence of SDN conflict rules forces TCP and UDP to have a significant average change in bandwidth that eventually affects the network and operations performance.