A new strategy for efficient decentralized network control

Abstract

The limited scope of Internet architecture forced network providers implementing centralized mechanisms (QoS, group communication, mobility, etc) to support attractive value added sessions. Besides ease to manage, performance aspects of such mechanisms, mainly in terms of scalability, robustness and availability, are shortcoming. In this sense, decentralization is promising, since complex networking operations may be provided throughout the nodes, increasing the network performance. However, current distributed solutions implement their own strategies for decentralization (e.g. synchronization, resilience, etc.), which contributes to increase Internet’s complexity and damage overall performance. This paper introduces a cost-effective strategy for scalable decentralization of control operations in current Internet, called Self-Organizing Multiple Edge Nodes (SOMEN) mechanism. SOMEN enables multiple distributed network Control Decision Points –CDPs- (e.g. network borders) to jointly exploit control data inside a network with low signaling load. The effectiveness of SOMEN was proved through analytical modeling and simulation, which demonstrated significant minimization of control overhead.