QuicSDN: Transitioning from TCP to QUIC for Southbound Communication in SDNs

Bibliographic Details
Title: QuicSDN: Transitioning from TCP to QUIC for Southbound Communication in SDNs
Authors: Kumar, Puneet, Dezfouli, Behnam
Source: Journal of Network and Computer Applications 222 (2024): 103780
Publication Year: 2021
Collection: Computer Science
Subject Terms: Computer Science - Networking and Internet Architecture
More Details: In Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), the control plane and data plane communicate for various purposes, such as applying configurations and collecting statistical data. While various methods have been proposed to reduce the overhead and enhance the scalability of SDNs, the impact of the transport layer protocol used for southbound communication has not been investigated. Existing SDNs rely on TCP (and TLS) to enforce reliability and security. In this paper, we show that the use of TCP imposes a considerable overhead on southbound communication, identify the causes of this overhead, and demonstrate how replacing TCP with QUIC can enhance the performance of this communication. We introduce the quicSDN architecture, enabling southbound communication in SDNs via the QUIC protocol. We present a reference architecture based on the standard, most widely used protocols by the SDN community and show how the controller and switch are revamped to facilitate this transition. We compare, both analytically and empirically, the performance of quicSDN versus the traditional SDN architecture and confirm the superior performance of quicSDN.
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1016/j.jnca.2023.103780
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2107.08336
Accession Number: edsarx.2107.08336
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1016/j.jnca.2023.103780