An Enhanced Data Plane for Network Event Processing in Software Defined Networking

Software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the key enablers of 5G networks. With a 5G application, the interaction between the SDN controller and data plane nodes will affect the performance requirements in delay-sensitive scenarios (e.g., URLLC) and increase the network signalling overhead in other scenarios (e.g., mMTC). However, the current data plane of SDN has no capability to handle network events unless inquiring the controller. To solve this problem, we propose an enhanced SDN data plane model to enable the network with data plane response capability for network events. Specifically, the delegation of various control plane functions along with the data path can enable the delay-sensitive network event processing without the interaction with the SDN controller. This can in turn minimize the interaction between the controller and data plane nodes. Experimental results show that the proposed enhanced SDN data plane can reduce the delay and signalling overhead during network events processing, especially in delay-sensitive applications of 5G networks.