IoTManager: Concerns-Based SDN Management Framework for IoT Networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an evolving technology in computer networks. One of SDN challenges is the lack of a standard SDN high-level framework, which provides an abstraction to lower levels through an easy to use high level interface without getting involved in difficult and complex programming tasks. Consequently, we propose IoTManager, an SDN concern-based management framework for IoT networks. IoTManager provides high level abstraction in SDN management layer through the separation of network concerns. IoTManager translates a set of input keywords into policies based on network management function and network concerns. Our translator is hybrid; proactive as it inserts OpenFlow rules to switches based on defined policies and reactive where it handles events according to the defined policies. A network scenario simulation via mininet shows our framework’s functionality and the high-level policies the framework can support converting them to low level flow rules. In addition, the performance is measured through calculating the different processing times. Moreover, the proposed abstraction facilitates managing the network through separation of concerns thus dividing the network management problem to less-complex sub-problems. Additionally, it helps closing the semantic gap between the intents of network administrators and the languages in which those intents can be encoded.