THRIFTY: towards high reduction in flow table memorY

The rapid evolution of information technology has compelled the ubiquitous systems and computing to adapt with this expeditious development. Because of its rigidity, computer networks failed to meet that evolvement for decades, however, the recently emerged paradigm of software-defined networks gives a glimpse of hope for a new networking architecture that provides more flexibility and adaptability. Fault tolerance is considered one of the key concerns with respect to the software-defined networks dependability. In this paper, we propose a new architecture, named THRIFTY, to ease the recovery process when failure occurs and save the storage space of forwarding elements, which is therefore aims to enhance the fault tolerance of software-defined networks. Unlike the prevailing concept of fault management, THRIFTY uses the Edge-Core technique to forward the incoming packets. THRIFTY is tailored to fit the only centrally controlled systems such as the new architecture of software-defined networks that interestingly maintain a global view of the entire network. The architecture of THRIFTY is illustrated and further directions are suggested in the context of scalability towards achieving further advances in this research area.