Secure East-West Communication to Approve Service Access Continuity for Mobile Devices in a Distributed SDN.

In a distributed mobile Software Defined Mobile Network (SDMN), a device is in a continuous movement from one domain to another. Since a different controller is responsible for each domain, the devices' authentication information needs to be communicated between the SDN controllers (this type of communication is called East-West communication) to ensure the continuity access to the used devices services. This paper proposes a new secure East-West communication to approve service access continuity for mobile devices in a Distributed SDN. A comparative study between the VPN based approach and the proposed one is done both analytically and by simulation according to two criteria: the approval access authentication delay and the communication overhead. The results show that the proposed approach provides a secure East-West communication using less communication overhead and decreases the approval access authentication delay of mobile devices in an SDN.