A Solution for Dynamic Controller Provisioning Problem of SDN using Harmony Search

Unlike the traditional networking infrastructure, the software defined network (SDN) separates the network control function from the data transmission function. The SDN covering a large geographical area requires multiple controllers, and controller provisioning has a significant impact on the performance of entire network. In this paper, a novel load balancing scheme is proposed to effectively solve the dynamic controller provisioning problem (DCPP) for SDN. The proposed scheme employs progressive harmony search and K-means clustering of the switches to maximize the accuracy of finding the optimal solution and minimize the search time. The proposed scheme is evaluated by computer simulation in terms of accuracy and execution time of load balancing, and it turns out to be superior to the existing schemes.