Using SDN to Enhance Load Balancing in Cloud Computing: An Overview and Future Directions

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a networking paradigm that separates the network’s control plane from the data plane, providing centralized and programmable management of network resources. SDN has been increasingly used to enhance load balancing in cloud computing environments, as it allows for dynamic, efficient, and automated traffic distribution across the network. SDN controllers can make real-time load balancing decisions based on network conditions and application requirements. This paper focuses on recent research concerning the utilization of SDN to enhance load balancing in cloud computing. The paper categorizes these contributions according to various properties of SDN, notably including Dynamic Traffic Engineering, Centralized Load Balancing Decisions, Application-Aware Load Balancing, Multi-Path Load Balancing, Load Balancing for Virtualized Environments as well as QoS-Based Load Balancing.