Performance prediction of software defined network using an artificial neural network

Abstract

An Artificial Neural Network has been proposed as predicting the performance of the Software Defined Network according to effective traffic parameters. Those used in this study are round-trip time, throughput and the flow table rules for each switch, POX controller and OpenFlow switches, which characterize the behaviour of the Software Defined Network, have been modelled and simulated via Mininet and Matlab platforms. An ANN has the ability to provide an excellent input-output relationship for nonlinear and complex processes. The network has been implemented using different topologies, one and two layers in the hidden zone with different numbers of neurons. Generalization of the prediction model has been tested with new data that are unseen in the training stage. The simulated results show reasonably good performance of the network.