Design and Development of Algorithms for Mitigating Distributed Denial of Service Attacks in Software Defined Networks

Abstract

A network device is an integral part of the computer network. The functionalities of such device can be divided into data plane, control plane, and management plane. The data plane functionality is to forward the packets to a specified port by referring to a forwarding table. The control plane functionality is to decide on the route or path to be taken by the packet to reach the destination. Functionalities like Firewall, Intrusion Detection, Load Balancing, and Traffic Engineering are implemented by the management plane. In traditional networks, functionalities of the data plane and control plane are integrated onto the same device. For example, a router in a traditional network does the control plane functionality of deciding the path to be taken using protocols like RIP, OSPF, BGP and also does the functionality of the data plane which includes forwarding the packet to the concerned port. The data plane and control plane is tightly coupled in traditional network and there can be trade-offs between them. Some devices may have better hardware but poorly written software and vice versa. The devices become vendor-specific because of this integration and hinder the innovation. Moreover, the distributed nature of traditional networks makes it difficult to monitor and control the activities of the network and customize services. newline