Toward manageable middleboxes in software-defined networking

Software-defined networking (SDN) acts as a centralized management unit, especially in a network with devices that operate under the transport layer of the OSI model. However, when a network with layer 7 middleboxes (MBs) is considered, current SDNs exhibit limitations. As such, to achieve a real-centralized management unit, a new architecture is required that decouples the data and control planes of all network devices. In this report, we propose such a complementary architecture to the current SDN in which SDN-enabled MBs are included along with contemporary SDN-enabled switches. The management unit of this architecture improves network performance and reduces routing cost by considering the status of the MBs during flow forwarding. This unit consists of the following two parts: an SDN controller (SDNC) and a middlebox controller (MBC). The latter selects the best MBs for each flow and the former determines the best path according to its routing algorithm and provides information via the MBC. The results show that the proposed architecture improved performance because the utilization of all network devices including MBs is manageable.