Metodologia para avaliação de desempenho em switches openflow.

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new computer network paradigm which proposes separating the control logic of the data traffic. In this paradigm, the network control is normally centralized allowing switches to be solely responsible for forward the data packet according to the one defined by the controller. In the construction of an SDN network we should take into account some peculiar performance aspects in the paradigm, such as: flow table, communicating with the controller, etc. These peculiarities make the traditional performance metrics, such as throughput, delay, jitter and packet loss, insufficient to assess the performance of an SDN switch. Thus, the development of a specific methodology for SDN switches and controllers performance tests is necessary. Conformance tests for the OpenFlow protocol are being defined by the Open Networking Foundation, however, OpenFlow-based switches performance tests are still in the beginning of their specification. Currently, there are few tools for SDN switches performance tests. Nevertheless, these tools focus their tests only on the control logic of the network or on the data traffic, and do not perform an assessment analyzing the switch hardware features. Based on this current context, this final paper proposes the development of a methodology which is able to assess the performance of a SDN switch hardware.