Performance Evaluation of Software-Defined Networking Controllers: A Comparative Study

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a viable approach for management of large and extensive networks with flexible quality of service requirements and huge data traffic. Due to the central role of SDN controllers in traffic engineering and performance of software-defined networks on one hand, and diversity of available SDN controllers on the other hand, an evaluation framework is required to study and compare the architectural choices and performance of distributed and centralized SDN controllers in action. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework for performance evaluation of OpenFlow SDN controllers. In this simulation platform, we analyze both centralized and decentralized architectures for controller deployment. Performance of controllers is evaluated based on Quality of Service (QoS) measures including delay and throughput in different network topologies under different workloads. The impact of routing protocols on controller performance in data center networks is also analyzed. Our results can provide valuable insights for scalable design and proper deployment of SDN controllers in the real world scenarios.