Load Balancing in Software Defined Network Using Multiple Controllers

Abstract

Load balancing is an essential function in software-defined networking (SDN) that helps to distribute traffic among the multiple networks to ensure efficient use of network resources and prevent controller overload. The Traditional load balancers have many limitations like inflexibility, cannot be used for larger networks, expensive hardware devices and efficiency is less. In order to overcome all this issues SDN based Load balancer came into existence. This approach uses a centralized controller to manage network resources and redirect traffic based on network conditions. Nowadays clients are using large amount of data and many requests are sent to the server. Single controller cannot be able to handle all the request, so this paper aims to build a load balancing using multiple controllers and also by using the Priority D-BMAP model which allows the load balancing algorithm to differentiate between different types of traffic and assign higher priorities to time-sensitive traffic, while lower priorities are given to non-time-sensitive traffic. This approach ensures that critical traffic receives higher bandwidth and lower latency, while non-critical traffic is routed through available resources, reducing the possibility of congestion. The proposed approach was evaluated using the NS3 simulator and a POX controller was utilized to handle client requests. The results indicates that by utilising the DBMAP model it reduces the delays and ensures fast resolution by allocating resources to requests in an effective and efficient manner. The flexibility for batch processing and by using POX controller makes it possible to effectively handle multiple requests at once and also by improving resource utilisation and throughput.