Topology resilience enhancement for software defined networks

Abstract: Software Defined Networks is a paradigm that flexibilizes the management of networking, separating the control and forwarding planes. This separation introduces new concerns towards the resilience of the network, which now presents different vulnerabilities related to the interaction between these planes. A resilience factor for Software Defined Networks is proposed, using multiple metrics to analyze intrinsic features of its architecture, serving as an indication for its resilience. Beyond that, topological augmentation algorithms are employed to increase the resilience of test topologies, as indicated by the proposed factor. Tests results demonstrate an improvement of the topologies’ resilience characteristics.