A Comprehensive Survey of Interface Protocols for Software Defined Networks

TL;DR

This survey comprehensively reviews interface protocols used in Software Defined Networks, categorizing their properties, capabilities, and virtualization schemes, while discussing current challenges and future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed classification and analysis of SDN interface protocols across different communication layers and virtualization schemes, highlighting open issues.

Findings

Classified SDN interfaces into categories based on properties and capabilities

Analyzed interface solutions in relation to virtualization schemes

Identified key research challenges and open issues in SDN interfaces

Abstract

Software Defined Networks has seen tremendous growth and deployment in different types of networks. Compared to traditional networks it decouples the control logic from network layer devices, and centralizes it for efficient traffic forwarding and flow management across the domain. This multi-layered architecture has data forwarding devices at the bottom in data plane, which are programmed by controllers in the control plane. The high level application or management plane interacts with control layer to program the whole network and enforce different policies. The interaction among these layers is done through interfaces which work as communication/programming protocols. In this survey, we present a comprehensive study of such interfaces available for southbound, northbound, and east/westbound communication. We have classified each type into different categories based on their properties and capabilities. Virtualization of networks devices is a common practice in Software Defined Networks. This paper also analyzes interface solution which work with different virtualization schemes. In addition, the paper highlights a number of short term and long term research challenges and open issues related to SDN interfaces.