Emergence of SDN with IoT

Muhammad Kareem
Punjab University College of Information Technology
Phdcsf18m501@pucit.edu.pk
Abstract Software Defined Network (SDN) provides the flexibility in traditional
networking by decoupling Data plane (hardware) and Control plane(software). SDN helps
in virtualization of resources, network management, and development of applications
without changing underlying hardware. The focus is, on application side with centralized
management of network. On the other side, aim of Internet of Things(IoT) is to connect
billions of objects with internet. Our study focus is to see the benefits for IoT from emerging
these two different technologies. We conduct a comparative study from different perspective
to see how SDN can adapt the current system in support of different IoT challenges including
security management, routing, adaptability, heterogeneity, scalability, and network cost. We
see the challenges overcome by SDN for IoT. Also, see to what extent flexibility is provided
by SDN to control and manage the billions of IoT devices efficiently.

Keywords: Software Defined Networking (SDN), Internet of Things(IoT), Load Balancing (LB),
6LowPAN, Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN’s)

1.Introduction
Internet of things has taken much attraction of researchers in recent years. It can manage objects
remotely, efficiently, and quickly. IoT is capable to connect anything at anyplace and anytime with
anyone [1]. IoT applications are contributing in every field of life including home automation,
smart cities, livestock and logistics, transport management and smart grids. Aim of IoT is to
connect billions of objects with internet. This is difficult to manage huge and heterogenous
network of IoT. On the other side, Software Defined Networking (SDN) has made new paradigm
in network management. SDN provides opportunities to solve rigidity of traditional network. In
traditional networking data plane and control plane were combined in each device including
routers, load balancer and switches. SDN come up with the solution of many problems in
traditional networking with introduction of virtualization of resources [2]. Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) started working in decoupling data and control plane [3] that helps
virtualization of resources, network management, and development of applications without
changing underlying hardware.
SDN can be used as overly for IoT into the real world. It can adapt the current system in support
of different IoT challenges including routing, adaptability, heterogeneity, scalability, and network
cost. In the following sections, we will see the comparison of traditional network with dynamic
Software Defined Network. We will focus on the motivation behind using Software Defined
Network for Internet of Things. Subsequently, the study of emerging architecture of SDN with
IoT. Lastly the areas, where Software Defined Networking is used to overcome the challenges in
IoT including security, intelligent routing, QoS provisioning, and Load Balancing.
2. Literature Review
IoT applications are providing quality in communication among human and machine. Lack of
flexibility, agility, and programmability in IoT bringing network scalability and heterogeneity
challenges.
IETF first started working in decoupling data and control plane is presented in [3].it helps
virtualization of resources, network management and development of applications without
changing underlying hardware. SDN provides centralized management of data through intelligent
entity known as SDN controller.
The work in [4] presented multi SDN controller framework to handle network efficiently. Multi
SDN controller can not only handle diverse network with dedicated controllers but also monitor
incoming and outgoing traffic efficiently. On the other hand, the work in [6] shows that latency
can also be reduced by installing multiple controllers. SDN based security for IoT in [4] classified
security-based solution into three ways including network based, traffic based, and crypto based
solution. Cryptography-based solutions presented in [7] which is concerned with confidentiality
of data and ownership. Symmetric (AES), Asymmetric algorithms (RSA) algorithms are used for
encoding and decoding of data. The work in [8],[9] envisioned the structural or topological
properties of network. Authenticity and integrity of information is merely depending on correct
value of consensus. In [10] author describe the delay minimization method for controlling IoT
traffic through SDN. Delay minimization is composed of three main functions 1) path resolving
2) delay tracking 3) delay management. Integration of SDN into 6LowPAN purpose a new
architecture SD-6LowPAN to obtain softwarized Network for multi-hop forwarding is described
in [11]. Where, SDN layers provide network programmability for applying forwarding rules
through centralized SDN controller.
3. Software Defined Networking (SDN)
In recent years, Software Defined Networking has made new paradigm in network management
[3],[4]. IoT provide opportunities to solve rigidity of traditional network. In traditional networking
data plane and control plane were combined in each device including routers, load balancer and
switches as shown in Fig 1.
Data Plane is responsible for forwarding and processing of data packets. IoT selects the next hope
based on instructions given by control logic along the path. Data plane forwards packet through
network devices and decides what to do, where to move and whether to encapsulate or decapsulate
data.
Control Plane is also called network signaling. It provides the management of traffic using its
control logic. IoT also provides the network management interface for network configuration.
Control plane consists of routing table where the next hope routing information is stored and
updated accordingly.
Some of traditional networking limitations are [4],[6]:

 They are tightly coupled (control plane can’t be used separately and vice versa).
 Very costly.
  New features can only be added IoT the vendors will, and time frame of adaptability is
very large.
 No centralized management and each device managed and configured individually.
 Innovations are rare. In the domain of Networking not so many innovations are found in
recent time as compared to computing industry

Figure 1: Traditional Networking [2]

3.1 SDN Architecture

Software Defined Networking (SDN) come up with the solution of many problems in
traditional networking with introduction of virtualization of resources [6]. Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) started working in decoupling data and control plane in 2004[wiki]. Which was
later refined by Stanford’s Computer Science department in 2008 and introduced standard
application programming interface (API) for controlling data plane from control plane. In 2009 a
protocol named OpenFlow, NFV were introduced for SDN and afterwards many other protocols
like Broader gateway protocol (BGP), NETCONF etc. were introduced. In 2017 and 2018 multi
SDN controller framework is introduced to handle network efficiently [4][7].
SDN allows network administrators to handle changes in network dynamically. SDN provides
centralized management of data through intelligent entity known as SDN controller [3]. SDN
decouples software with hardware. This allow management, optimization, security and
configuration of devices by using flexible application programing interfaces (API’. The controller
can update, IoT or delete the entries in flow table dynamically.
SDN architecture is shown in Fig 2. IoT is divided into five parts and each part detail is as follows:
Application Plane is also known as management plane consists of different kind of networking
applications like load balancing, routing, firewall and network management. Also, responsible for
defining protocols for network traffic.
Figure 2: SDN Architecture [6]

Northbound interface provides an interface between control plane and application plane. IoT
receives instructions from application plane and forward to control plane for southbound interface.
Control plane consists of SDN controllers who have capability to provide overall view of network
and provide centralized network management. SDN controllers also provide high security
mechanism by applying different cryptography algorithms, firewalls and device identification
schemes. This allocate resources dynamically and facilitate high data transmission for fulfilling
network needs
Southbound interface provides an interface between control plane and data plane. IoT receives
instructions from controllers for underlying hardware devices. Also, gives communication
protocol for controller and data plane known as OpenFlow protocol. OpenFlow protocol mange
the routing information and load balancing in data plane.
Data plane consists of infrastructure for physical and virtual network devices, used forwarding
data packets from source to destination. Network devices are interconnected through wired or
wireless communication medium.

Table 1 [6]: Software Defined Networking vs Traditional Networking

Sr.no Criteria Traditional Networking SDN

Network management Difficult (changes are made IoT each Easier

device separately)
1

Global view Not possible Central view of

controller
2

3 Maintenance cost High Low

 Updating/Error High (sometimes take months) Low
handling time
4

5 Adaptation/scalability Not possible Highly possible

6 Recourse utilization Less High

Handling ability of Difficult Less Difficult

Large/Heterogenous
7 Networks

4. Brief overview of Internet of Things (IoT)

In this era of Globalization, internet of things has taken much attraction from both educational
and commercial organization perspective. This is because, we can manage objects remotely,
efficiently and quickly. This is capable to connect anything IoT anyplace and anytime with anyone
by using wired or wireless path/network [1]. IoT applications are everywhere including home
automation, smart cities, livestock and logistics, transport management and smart grids. This
increased human quality of life because everything is managed on one click.
Internet of Things give the notion of developing infrastructure for connecting virtual and physical
objects. IoT evolved different technologies such as software defined network (SDN), Cloud
Computing, Artificial intelligence and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) to get more benefits from
such emergence [2]. In this report, our focus is to see the benefits from emergence SDN with IoT.
This has been a hot area for researchers during last decade. According to google scholar the number
of journals and conference papers has been doubled during 2010 to 2017[3].
4.1 IoT Architecture
IoT World forum committee release the standardized architecture in 2014. This model is
used as a common architecture by most of the researchers as a framework. IoT architecture is
shown in Fig 3. IoT consists of following parts:
IoT Objects sense the data from the environment using sensors. The sensed data is sent and receive
among them using network devices such as routers, switches, firewall and load balancer that
forward data to computing devices using IoT gateway.
IoT gateway is an interface between IoT devices and IoT cloud. The purpose of this gateway is to
convert incoming data flows into suitable information required for processing.
IoT cloud is a computational place where all the data is stored and processed.
Applications are run on electrical devices such as phone or PC that are responsible for
interpretation of information. IoT consists of different applications that use IoT input data or
control IoT devices.

Figure 3: IoT Architecture[6]

4.2 Challenges of IoT

There are many challenges that hinders the successful deployment of IoT application. Some
of the challenges are discussed as follows
Big data: Internet of things connect billions of devices around the globe that create massive
amount of data. Reliability of applications is merely depending upon the management and integrity
of data. This is a challenge to dealt with such huge amount of data and heavily depend on effect
data management handling.
Adaptability/Scalability: Number of devices in IoT are growing rapidly. Current IoT
environment is not enough to adapt changes to resolve scalability issues. Scalability demands that
environment should change according to demands and needs. In the absence of scalability system
become rigid and faces many challenges whenever some adaptation is required.
Heterogeneity: IoT connect thousands of devices and network with different architecture,
operating systems and protocols they used. IoT has become difficult to handle such heterogenous
environment as the number of devices are growing rapidly.
Privacy & Security: IoT applications success is strongly depend on the privacy and protection of
data from unauthorized persons. Different security mechanism was given but a reliable security
structure still lacks due to constrained network devices in term of energy, computational power
and storage size. The global acceptance of IoT and its related technologies depend on security and
privacy of user data. Because of heterogeneity and complex structure IoT still lacks in security.
So, a powerful, reliable and effective security mechanism is still needed in IoT.
Interpretability: IoT environment connect almost every object through a common network
framework. As number of IoT devices are increasing the lack of interpretability between them has
become a critical issue. Although many suggested solutions resolved some issues such as data over
sound technology but still interpretability is a big issue in IoT system.
5. SDN with IoT
SDN and IoT are two distinct technologies, where SDN provides the flexibility in traditional
networking by decoupling Data plane (hardware) and Control plane(software) and communication
is done through application programming interfaces (APIs) like OpenFlow [2a8]. SDN helps
virtualization of resources, network management and development of applications without
changing underlying hardware. The focus is on application side with centralized management of
network (SDN controller). On the other side, aim of IoT is to connect billions of objects with
internet. This is difficult to manage huge, heterogenous network of IoT. SDN controller can not
only handle such kind of diverse network but also monitor incoming and outgoing traffic[3]. Also,
confirm security of network from inside and outside attack by applying advanced security
mechanisms SDN can adapt the current system in support of different IoT challenges including
routing, adaptability, heterogeneity, scalability and network cost.

5.1 SDN based IoT Architecture

SDN can be emerge with IoT as an overly to get benefits in the real world. The fig 3 shows
the SDN based IoT architecture. IoT framework is interconnected with SDN controller who
manage the underlying heterogenous network. Fig 3 consists of the following components
IoT object consists of IoT agents who are responsible for sensing, collecting and forwarding data
to IoT controllers. Each IoT object must be registered with IoT controller before start working
through their Unique Addresses, object identifier no and share information like used network
communication protocol.

Figure 4: SDN based IoT Architecture [7]

IoT controller registers IoT agents with their addresses and on receiving data forwarding request
IoT develops forwarding rule depending upon communication protocol used and share such rules
with SDN controller. This is responsible for finding destination object address and take necessary
actions on data received from the IoT agents.
SDN controller is responsible for establishing connection between both objects and decide path
by running different routing algorithms. It also manages incoming and outgoing traffic in SDN-
enabled network. SDN controller can efficiently secure the IoT network by implementing security
firewalls, cryptographical algorithms, user authenticating mechanisms despite of their latency
overhead. In recent research [3][7], it is observed that such latency can be reduced by installing
multiple SDN controllers to increase network performance.

5.2 Security for SDN based IoT

IoT contains constrained devices like sensing agents the make IoT more vulnerable to
security risks. Due to limited energy, computational power and storage size implementing security
mechanisms such as cryptography algorithms, authentication procedure brings down the network
performance. SDN based security for IoT in [4] classified security-based solution into three ways
including network based, traffic based and crypto based solution.
cryptography-based solutions are concerned with confidentiality of data and ownership.
Symmetric (AES), Asymmetric algorithms (RSA) used for encoding and decoding of data. It helps
to mitigate shared identity by trusted third party certificate authority which encrypts not only meta
data but also source and destination IP addresses. The drawback is communication overhead
because of the control traffic between SDN controller and IoT agents. On the other side, Network
based solution dealt with the structural or topological properties of network. Authenticity and
integrity of information is merely depending on correct value of consensus. Resilient formation of
nodes in network is necessary to achieve robustness. Lastly, focus in traffic-based solution is on
flow of data among nodes in distributed system. These security mechanisms confirm the flow in
the presence of malicious activities. This is achieved by running different algorithms like
OpenFlow.
Table 2: SDN based IoT security solutions

Sr.no Search effort achievement

2 Black SDN for the Internet of Things[7] Mitigate against data

gathering attacks

Encrypting payload including

source and destination IP
addresses
 3 Flow based security for IoT devices using SDN Guarantee the independence
gateway [8] of each domain in case of
failure

4 SDN based IoT architecture for security Propose routing protocol for
improvement[9] distributed environment

Synchronization among
multiple controller to achieve
combined objective

5.3 Dynamic Load Balancing (LB) for IoT

Load Balancing provides data distribution services among different resources of network in
order to maximize the optimization of resources. Load balancing methods can be static or dynamic.
In static methods the LB is implemented on hardware level and the behavior of the user cannot be
predicted. On the other side, dynamic LB is more efficient because the load is distributed based on
different policies and protocols. A suitable load balancing helps in maximum scalability, minimum
response time and maximize throughput. Centralized network management and global view from
SDN controller allows allocation of resources through Southbound APIs. Network administrator
can implement rules and policies for LB at application layer. For load balancing two operational
rules are defined 1) Reactive 2) proactive. In former approach data packets are handled by network
devices and forwarded without involvement of centralized management. On the other side, in later
approach devices send data packets to centralized controller for decision making. In such a way
load on SDN switches can be adjusted dynamically due to global view of network.

SDN controller collects data from IoT devices and decide the routes based on different protocol
algorithms [8]such as Round Robin (RR), Weighted Round Robin (WRR), Least Connection (LC),
Weighted Least Connection (WLC), Contention Balancing (CB) etc. with RR algorithm a round
like table is managed which hold the node information of network and each node gets the task
equally likely but it does not bring the characterization of node into consideration. While, WRR
algorithm assigns weight to each node calculated based on node specification e.g. processing
power, number of connections, battery specification etc. Least connection assigns a value to node
based on number of connections. The table is updated whenever a connection is added or deleted.
The WLC use weights with LC and assign more connection to that node having more weight value.
Lastly, contention Balancing algorithm checks the usage of network devices and when it reaches
to 80% of the total capacity then load balancer module is activated to overcome this traffic
bottleneck and controller finds the new best path and route the upcoming traffic to this new path.
Table 3: Dynamic Load Balancing algorithm implemented in SDN based IOT

Sr.no LB Algorithm Working

1 RR A round like table is managed which hold the node information of network
and each node gets the task equally likely

2 WRR Assigns weight to each node calculated based on node specification e.g.
processing power, number of connections, battery specification etc

3 LC Assign value to node based on number of connections. The table entry is

updated whenever a connection is added or deleted.

4 WLC It uses weights with LC and assign more connection to that node having
more weight value.

5 CD checks the usage of network devices and when it reaches to 80% of the total
capacity

5.4 Minimizing latency of critical traffic through SDN

Huge amount of traffic is generating by billions of devices in IoT. This introduce network
management challenge for operators. In such situation, keeping low end to end flow latency is
crucial. SDN can manage this critical end to end IoT traffic efficiently. For the sake of handling
latency, one of the important parameters is the identification of data flow paths and end to end
delay along identified paths. By identification of highly delayed paths traffic can be redirected
through the paths with minimum delay. In [minim latency] describe the delay minimization
method for controlling IoT traffic through SDN. Delay minimization is composed of three main
functions 1) path resolving 2) delay tracking 3) delay management. Delay tracking and path
resolving methods run in parallel to monitor activities while delay management runs on top of
them and take necessary actions based on controlled information.
Path resolving creates a list of a variable paths between the heads and tail node. To develop list,
it picks up sending and receiving IoT host and the head and tail nodes of available paths.
Afterwards, it creates links sequentially between each consecutive node. This is done by brute
force algorithm.
Delay tracking measures the real time latency of identified network paths. This provide the
estimation of delay that a data flow will face between the head and the tail nodes of sending and
receiving hosts. Based on estimation, the route between two hosts is decided. All the
implementation functions run in SDN controller. A request is firstly sent for probe to SDN
controller who selects route based on the decision taken by delay management function. Delay
information along traveled path is updated in the list after completion of successful
communication.
Delay management runs on top of both paths resolving and delay tracking. It applies a function
that gather takes necessary actions based on controlled information and select real time decisions
to select the most appropriate path among all available to get the latency minimum. Delay
minimization function consists of following steps that are executed iteratively:
1) Gather list of paths for pairs of IP addresses from path resolving function
2) Gather recent value of delay from delay tracking function
3) Find best suitable path based on min= (d1,d2,d3……dn)
4) Program path in head and tail node direction
5) Update data flow path action list

5.5 Multi-hop Forwarding in 6LowPAN through SDN

The development of Wireless sensors network (WSN) has been immensely increased in
recent years. WSN plays an important role in the expansion of Internet of Things market for low
power and low-cost networks. Typically, traffic patterns were point to multipoint i-e sink to sensor
nodes and multipoint to point i-e sensor nodes to sink. Nowadays, application in industrial system
has introduced new traffic pattern machine to machine (M2M). 6LowPAN has been developed to
enable end to end communication in low power and lossy network. Lack of standardization layer
2 protocols arise problem in nodes to build formalize table. There is need to establish an adohoc
system for network configuration to meet users need. On the other hand, Software Defined
Networking (SDN) is capable to manage configuration and interpretability through centralized
manner. In recent years, SDN has applied softwarization approach in wireless sensor ntwork
domain.Integration of SDN into 6LowPAN purpose a new architecture SD-6LowPAN to obtain
softwarized Network for multi-hop forwarding. SD-6LowPAN architecture is described in fig 4.
It consists of three parts 1) SDN controller 2) Gateway 3) SDN Node,
SDN Controller gets the information related to 6LowPAN during formation of the network and
complete flow tables at each sensor node through SBI interface. Every packet is forwarded
according to mesh under technique. It manages 6LowPAN operations with the help of Local
Controller. SDN Controller gather information regarding network formation through the gateway
to generate the global view of network. Afterwards, provide the forwarding policies according to
configuration rules through SBI interface to SDN Node.
Gateway allows the interaction and exchange of information between SDN Controller and SDN
Node. All the information regarding construction DoDAG formation and maintenance is
exchanged through gateway.

Figure 5[9]: System Architecture SD-6LoWPAN

SDN Node is constrained sensor node of 6LowPAN with the additional SDN sub-layer that
intercept the packet flow between 6LowPAN and MAC layers. SDN layers also provide network
programmability for applying forwarding rules through centralized SDN controller. All the
operations are handled by flow tables at SDN Node
SD-6LowPAN architecture allows dynamic and control multi hop forwarding over 6LowPAN
through software defined networking in 6LowPAN. It presents a new forwarding paradigm in
networking to achieve network reconfigurability. SDN inclusion provide low cost, better
performance in communication between end point.

6. Conclusion
IoT is changing the way of communication among different physical objects with the internet.
IoT applications are providing quality in communication among human and machine. Lack of
flexibility, agility and programmability in IoT bringing network scalability and heterogeneity
challenges. It was needed to use SDN technology for IoT management. In this report, we presented
the need of SDN for providing solution of many problems in traditional networking with
introduction of softwarization and virtualization of resources. In this work, we studied the
motivation behind emerging these two different technologies. Lastly, we make a comparative
study from different perspective to see how SDN can adapt the current system in support of
tackling different IoT challenges.

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