Controller scheduling for continued SDN operation under DDoS attacks

Abstract

There exists a way that attackers can identify software defined networks (SDNs). Knowing the vulnerabilities of a SDN, the attackers can mount a saturation attack on the SDN controller with the aim of incapacitating the entire SDN. Therefore, the controller should have an architecture to weather out such an attack while continuing operation. A scheduling-based architecture is proposed for the SDN controller that leads to effective attack confinement and network protection during denial of service (DoS) attacks.