Abstract—Using distributed Software Defined Networking (SDN)control, SDN delivers additional flexibility to network management, and it has been a significant breakthrough in network innovation. Switch migration is often used for distributed controller workload balancing. The Time-Sharing Switch Migration (TSSM) scheme proposed a strategy in which multiple controllers are allowed to share the workload of a switch via time sharing during an overloaded condition, resulting in reduced ping-pong controller difficulty, fewer overload occurrences, and improved controller efficiency. However, it requires more than one controller to accomplish, it has greater migration costs and higher controller resource usage during the TSSM operating time. As a result, we presented a coalitional game strategy that optimizes controller selection throughout the TSSM phase depending on flow characteristics. The new TSSM method reduces migration costs and controller resource usage while still providing TSSM benefits. For the sake of practicality, the proposed strategy is implemented using an open network operating system. The experimental findings reveal that, as compared to the typical TSSM system, the proposed technique reduces migration costs and controller resource usage by approximately 18%.
 
Keywords—switch migration, load balancing, coalitional game strategy, time sharing switch migration, software defined networking


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