Achieving Resilience in Software-Defined Networks

Establish architectures and mechanisms that ensure resilience of software-defined networks, including high availability of the logically centralized control plane and robust data-plane fault tolerance, to address the currently unresolved challenge of SDN resiliency.

Background

Within the discussion on centralized versus distributed controller designs, the authors highlight single points of failure and the need for fault tolerance. Distributed controllers can improve availability and scalability but introduce trade-offs in consistency and coordination.

The paper points readers to a dedicated resilience section and explicitly notes that end-to-end resilience—spanning both control and data planes—remains an open challenge, underscoring the need for principled designs and mechanisms for fast failure detection, protection, and recovery.