A wireless solution for SDN (software defined networking) in data center networks

Software Defined Networking has been adopted to improve data center network efficiency. In SDN, the controllers are responsible for exchanging information with the switches to perform specific operations such as data forwarding. The transmission of control traffic usually uses networks different from data networks. However, building an additional wired network for the control traffic leads to high cabling complexity. Since a wireless network involves almost no cabling and is easy to install, we propose a wireless solution where switches make a wireless connection with controllers via wireless access points (AP). In this design, switches are divided into clusters, and an AP is placed at the center of each cluster. An important issue is to determine the minimum number of APs such that a given control traffic demand can be met. We propose an analytical model to evaluate the system throughput for possible clusterings, and an efficient algorithm to search for the optimal one. The extensive simulations demonstrate that our method can reduce cabling complexity significantly.