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On Controller Performance in Software-Defined Networks
Amin Tootoonchian, University of Toronto and International Computer Science Institute; Sergey Gorbunov and Yashar Ganjali, University of Toronto; Martin Casado, Nicira Networks; Rob Sherwood, Big Switch Networks
Little is known about the practical performance implications of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). And while recent work has attempted to address perceived limitations of SDN, they compare against systems that have not been optimized for performance. In this paper, we hope to establish both a methodology for measuring the performance of various SDN implementations, as well as a reasonable "base case" for comparison. To that end, we have built "NOX-MT", an optimized multithreaded SDN controller based on NOX, and a new tool "cbench" for comparative benchmarking.
We show that NOX-MT has six times higher throughput than NOX in a run with a single CPU, and 33 times better throughput in a run with 8 CPU cores. On a machine with eight 2GHz CPU cores, NOX-MT handles up to 1.6 million flows per second with a flow setup latency of 3 milliseconds. These results demonstrate the possibility of building very fast SDN controllers.
Rob Sherwood, Big Switch
Rob leads standardization and controller software architecture at Big Switch, where he developed and evangelized the emerging OpenFlow standard and network virtualization. He is the current Chair of the ONF’s Architecture & Framework Working Group and all Northbound API activity and was vice-chair for the ONF Testing & Interoperability Working Group. Rob prototyped the first OpenFlow-based network hypervisor, the “FlowVisor,” allowing production and experimental traffic to safely co-exist on the same physical network, and is involved in various standards efforts and partner and customer engagements. Rob holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.
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author = {Amin Tootoonchian and Sergey Gorbunov and Yashar Ganjali and Martin Casado and Rob Sherwood},
title = {On Controller Performance in {Software-Defined} Networks},
booktitle = {2nd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Management of Internet, Cloud, and Enterprise Networks and Services (Hot-ICE 12)},
year = {2012},
address = {San Jose, CA},
url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/hot-ice12/workshop-program/presentation/tootoonchian},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = apr
}
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