Load balancing-based multi-controller coordinated deployment strategy in software defined optical networks

Abstract In software defined optical networks (SDON), a single controller can hardly manage all the optical devices especially in the large-scale networks, while multiple controllers deployed in the network can solve it. Recently, more and more attention has been paid to the multi-controller architecture, and the deployment of controllers is an important issue in large software defined optical networks. However, the existing architectures focus on static mapping of controllers and switches and do not consider load balance among different controllers. It is worth further studying the cooperation of multiple controllers. This paper presents a multi-controller coordinated deployment strategy (Switch Migration Based Controller Placement, SMBCP) based on load balancing. Simulation results show that SMBCP can significantly reduce the load difference among different controllers in SDON and reduce the migration cost of switches, thus improving the load balance of the controller.