Evaluation of the Detection Capabilities of the ONOS SDN Controller

Abstract

The process of monitoring the network, especially for larger ones, is very complex and contains many pitfalls. For instance the balance between granularity of information and their performance impact on the network. With the help of SDN this challenge can become easier, as it offers new methods, mechanisms and opportunities. One of the current most important Open Source controllers is the ONOS SDN controller. According to its developers it is a production ready controller that offers high availability due to its logically centralized and physically distributed architecture. But, as our investigations show, it is unable to cope with hazardous network conditions such as sporadic or recurring packet loss. It either does not detect packet loss or only detects it after long time periods, failing all common network availability targets.