Software-defined inter-domain routing revisited

Abstract

The decoupling of control and data plane in software-defined networking (SDN) has been shown to be promising to improve routing performance in the context of intradomain routing. The applicability of SDN in inter-domain routing, especially with respect to route convergence, has not been properly explored. In this work, we propose a mathematical model to quantify the BGP convergence time for inter-domain routing by capturing only the essential components in BGP convergence process. Based on the model and some practical observations, we study how SDN may help to facilitate the interdomain routing. We further present a greedy algorithm that selects Autonomous Systems (ASes) for incremental SDN deployment with the objectives of minimizing the BGP convergence time. The simulation result based on the real world Internet topology confirms the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.