Hardening the Software Defined Network [sdn] Controller Using Border Gateway Protocol [BGP]

Abstract

From a necessity, with reference to Network Facilities Providers [NFPs], to adapt to automated and scalable networks, the computing industry did introduce Software Defined Networking [SDN]. It improves on packet transport times, and therefore the performance of the network system, by separating the packet switching layer from the packet control layer. Despite the processing time advantage of Software Defined Networking [SDN], its OpenFlow protocol implementation has been prone to Man-in-the-Middle [MITM] and Distributed Denial of Service [DDoS] cyber-attacks. This vulnerabilities have been discovered in the OpenFlow algorithms. Internet Service Providers [ISPs] and Cloud Service Providers [CSPs], therefore, find themselves in a quagmire: on one hand, the impetus to improve the network’s processing time parameters by upgrading their systems to a Software Defined Networking [SDN] architecture, and on the other hand, is the inhibition to implement this architecture due to the OpenFlow protocol’s non-resilience to the nefarious security threats. This research project implemented a Border Gateway Protocol [BGP] approach, via the Software Defined Networking [SDN] south-bound protocol, in order to realize a hardened secure channel for the Software Defined Networking [SDN] controller. This was to provide a viable and more reliable alternative to the default OpenFlow protocol. The OpenFlow protocol has been known to be a best performance protocol for packet transmission, and the Border Gateway Protocol [BGP], as from its logic, has been structured to be a best performance protocol for policy driven outputs. From an empirical approach therefore, the objective in the lab experiment was to compare the performance of the Border Gateway Protocol [BGP] to the OpenFlow protocol, as a Software Defined Networking [SDN] south-bound protocol for both a resilient and reliable network.