Flexible reassignment of flow processing-aware controllers in future wireless networks

Abstract

The growing number of network mechanisms results in a large amount of data flow processing to be performed in future wireless access networks. Determining suitable locations for data processing in a network is important for a good network performance but also a non-trivial task as data processing imposes many requirements on network resources. Further, data flows and network load generally change over time, possibly very quickly, so that a static, one-time placement is not an adequate solution. Hence, a framework that determines these locations should also flexibly reassign them over time. We address this need by a flexible flow processing-aware controller placement framework (FlexFCPF), which places and flexibly reassigns controller devices that are able to perform both network control (conventional SDN) and data flow processing for an efficient management of future wireless networks. We have developed and implemented a fast heuristic framework and we prove its efficiency by providing evaluation results of FlexFCPF's performance in a dynamic network simulation.