HULA: Dynamic and Scalable Load Balancing Mechanism for Data Plane of SDN

Abstract

Multi-rooted topologies are used in large-scale networks to provide greater bisectional bandwidth. These topologies efficiently use a higher degree of multipathing, probing, and link utilization. An end-to-end load balancing strategy is required to use the bisection bandwidth effectively. HULA (Hop-by-hop Utilization-aware Load balancing Architecture) monitors congestion to determine the best path to the destination but, needs to be evaluated in terms of scalability. The authors of this paper through artifact research methodologies, stretch the scalability up to 1000 nodes and further evaluate the performance of HULA on software defined network platform over ONOS controller. A detailed investigation on HULA algorithm is analysed and compared with four proficient large-scale load balancing mechanisms including: connection hash, weighted round-robin, Data Plane Devlopment Kit (DPDK) technique, and a Stateless Application-Aware Load-Balancer (SHELL).