Broadcast Storm Prevention in Software Defined Network

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new principle in the networking paradigm, which makes a communication network programmable. In SDN, control and management are centralized and decoupled from data plane, thus making the network programmable. In SDN, for a single change in network, the network configurations are changed only at central or some specific controller(s) rather than touching individual network devices. A Local Area Network (LAN) is prone to Layer-2 Broadcast Storm and an early safety measure must be taken to ensure the broadcast storm does not take down the whole network. A looped network topology in a LAN is basically what is needed for the broadcast storm to strike. So in order to prevent the undesired creation of loop network, Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) has been already in use in traditional networking infrastructures. This thesis presents the application of STP in SDN as a loop prevention mechanism. The network simulation of the looped topology is performed in mininet (Linux based emulator) and with Ryu (SDN controller). A SDN controller application specifically for the loop prevention is developed and tested.