Cross-Entrance Consistent Range Classifier with OpenFlow

In this paper we present a new Openflow based architecture to manage flows across a multi entrance SDN network in a consistent way, thus improving in several aspects on previous works [4, 5]. Our contributions are in three levels. At the first level we use OpenFlow features in a sophisticated way to implement a range classification scheme which to the best of our knowledge is more space efficient (only 3 entries per range) than previous known classifiers. In the second contribution we show how to update ranges across multiple switches in an atomic manner - allows to update the set of ranges and their associated actions while packets are classified and the network is changing. Finally, using the two schemes above, we present an architecture suitable for several applications such as load-balancing, and NFV, to manage multi-entrance consistency - keeping Per Flow consistency even when the flow changes the entrance point to our network.