Performance and Security Evaluation of SDN Networks in OMNeT++/INET

Abstract: Software Defined Networking (SDN) has been recently introduced as a new communication paradigm in computer networks. By separating the control plane from the data plane and entrusting packet forwarding to straightforward switches, SDN makes it possible to deploy and run networks which are more flexible to manage and easier to configure. This paper describes a set of extensions for the INET framework, which allow researchers and network designers to simulate SDN architectures and evaluate their performance and security at design time. Together with performance evaluation and design optimization of SDN networks, our extensions enable the simulation of SDN-based anomaly detection and mitigation techniques, as well as the quantitative evaluation of cyber-physical attacks and their impact on the network and application. This work is an ongoing research activity, and we plan to propose it for an official contribution to the INET framework.