Evaluation of Reactive Service Function Path Discovery in Symmetrical Environment

Abstract

In this paper we continue our study of path discovery process for Service Function Chaining (SFC) in Software Defined Network (SDN). By default, service function (SF) paths are established proactively - before data transmission takes place. We have argued that this constraint can be eliminated with the use of our proposed Reactive SF path discovery approach. Such SFs as network address translation (NAT) or stateful firewall (FW) are SF path’s symmetry dependent requiring a visit of both ingress and egress flows. Thus, we evaluated SF path discovery processes in Mininet emulation network. Outcome of this study is a comparison of proactive and reactive SF path discovery processes for both asymmetrical and symmetrical SF paths. It shows that even in symmetrical environment reactive SF path discovery has a higher probability of successful SF path detection.

Keywords

• network service header
• network function
• packet encapsulation
• symmetrical connection
• software defined network
• service function chaining