QoS-aware virtual SDN network planning

Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies provide applications opportunities to manipulate underlying network flows and topologies via network controllers during runtime. In cloud environments, networked virtual machines can be enhanced by SDN by providing applications with controllable infrastructures to meet system-level quality requirements; however, customizing a suitable network topology with optimally placed controller(s) for given quality requirements and workload characteristics is often not an easy task. We call such problem virtual SDN network planning problem. In this paper, a Topology-Controller planner (TCPlanner) is proposed for customizing the network topology and placing the controllers. Experiments with different scales of network show that our approach can effectively plan virtual SDN networks to meet the various QoS requirements and reduce costs.