Accurate early classification of elephant flows(elephants)is important for network management and resource optimization.Elephant models,mainly based on the byte count of flows,can always achieve high accuracy,but not ...Accurate early classification of elephant flows(elephants)is important for network management and resource optimization.Elephant models,mainly based on the byte count of flows,can always achieve high accuracy,but not in a time-efficient manner.The time efficiency becomes even worse when the flows to be classified are sampled by flow entry timeout over Software-Defined Networks(SDNs)to achieve a better resource efficiency.This paper addresses this situation by combining co-training and Reinforcement Learning(RL)to enable a closed-loop classification approach that divides the entire classification process into episodes,each involving two elephant models.One predicts elephants and is retrained by a selection of flows automatically labeled online by the other.RL is used to formulate a reward function that estimates the values of the possible actions based on the current states of both models and further adjusts the ratio of flows to be labeled in each phase.Extensive evaluation based on real traffic traces shows that the proposed approach can stably predict elephants using the packets received in the first 10% of their lifetime with an accuracy of over 80%,and using only about 10% more control channel bandwidth than the baseline over the evolved SDNs.展开更多
Software-defined networking(SDN)is an innovative paradigm that separates the control and data planes,introducing centralized network control.SDN is increasingly being adopted by Carrier Grade networks,offering enhance...Software-defined networking(SDN)is an innovative paradigm that separates the control and data planes,introducing centralized network control.SDN is increasingly being adopted by Carrier Grade networks,offering enhanced networkmanagement capabilities than those of traditional networks.However,because SDN is designed to ensure high-level service availability,it faces additional challenges.One of themost critical challenges is ensuring efficient detection and recovery from link failures in the data plane.Such failures can significantly impact network performance and lead to service outages,making resiliency a key concern for the effective adoption of SDN.Since the recovery process is intrinsically dependent on timely failure detection,this research surveys and analyzes the current literature on both failure detection and recovery approaches in SDN.The survey provides a critical comparison of existing failure detection techniques,highlighting their advantages and disadvantages.Additionally,it examines the current failure recovery methods,categorized as either restoration-based or protection-based,and offers a comprehensive comparison of their strengths and limitations.Lastly,future research challenges and directions are discussed to address the shortcomings of existing failure recovery methods.展开更多
In Software-Defined Networks(SDNs),determining how to efficiently achieve Quality of Service(QoS)-aware routing is challenging but critical for significantly improving the performance of a network,where the metrics of...In Software-Defined Networks(SDNs),determining how to efficiently achieve Quality of Service(QoS)-aware routing is challenging but critical for significantly improving the performance of a network,where the metrics of QoS can be defined as,for example,average latency,packet loss ratio,and throughput.The SDN controller can use network statistics and a Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)method to resolve this challenge.In this paper,we formulate dynamic routing in an SDN as a Markov decision process and propose a DRL algorithm called the Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic QoS-aware Routing Optimization Mechanism(AQROM)to determine routing strategies that balance the traffic loads in the network.AQROM can improve the QoS of the network and reduce the training time via dynamic routing strategy updates;that is,the reward function can be dynamically and promptly altered based on the optimization objective regardless of the network topology and traffic pattern.AQROM can be considered as one-step optimization and a black-box routing mechanism in high-dimensional input and output sets for both discrete and continuous states,and actions with respect to the operations in the SDN.Extensive simulations were conducted using OMNeT++and the results demonstrated that AQROM 1)achieved much faster and stable convergence than the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient(DDPG)and Advantage Actor-Critic(A2C),2)incurred a lower packet loss ratio and latency than Open Shortest Path First(OSPF),DDPG,and A2C,and 3)resulted in higher and more stable throughput than OSPF,DDPG,and A2C.展开更多
By decoupling control plane and data plane,Software-Defined Networking(SDN) approach simplifies network management and speeds up network innovations.These benefits have led not only to prototypes,but also real SDN dep...By decoupling control plane and data plane,Software-Defined Networking(SDN) approach simplifies network management and speeds up network innovations.These benefits have led not only to prototypes,but also real SDN deployments.For wide-area SDN deployments,multiple controllers are often required,and the placement of these controllers becomes a particularly important task in the SDN context.This paper studies the problem of placing controllers in SDNs,so as to maximize the reliability of SDN control networks.We present a novel metric,called expected percentage of control path loss,to characterize the reliability of SDN control networks.We formulate the reliability-aware control placement problem,prove its NP-hardness,and examine several placement algorithms that can solve this problem.Through extensive simulations using real topologies,we show how the number of controllers and their placement influence the reliability of SDN control networks.Besides,we also found that,through strategic controller placement,the reliability of SDN control networks can be significantly improved without introducing unacceptable switch-to-controller latencies.展开更多
As a new networking paradigm,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)enables us to cope with the limitations of traditional networks.SDN uses a controller that has a global view of the network and switch devices which act as ...As a new networking paradigm,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)enables us to cope with the limitations of traditional networks.SDN uses a controller that has a global view of the network and switch devices which act as packet forwarding hardware,known as“OpenFlow switches”.Since load balancing service is essential to distribute workload across servers in data centers,we propose an effective load balancing scheme in SDN,using a genetic programming approach,called Genetic Programming based Load Balancing(GPLB).We formulate the problem to find a path:1)with the best bottleneck switch which has the lowest capacity within bottleneck switches of each path,2)with the shortest path,and 3)requiring the less possible operations.For the purpose of choosing the real-time least loaded path,GPLB immediately calculates the integrated load of paths based on the information that receives from the SDN controller.Hence,in this design,the controller sends the load information of each path to the load balancing algorithm periodically and then the load balancing algorithm returns a least loaded path to the controller.In this paper,we use the Mininet emulator and the OpenDaylight controller to evaluate the effectiveness of the GPLB.The simulative study of the GPLB shows that there is a big improvement in performance metrics and the latency and the jitter are minimized.The GPLB also has the maximum throughput in comparison with related works and has performed better in the heavy traffic situation.The results show that our model stands smartly while not increasing further overhead.展开更多
Software-defined network(SDN)is a new form of network architecture that has programmability,ease of use,centralized control,and protocol independence.It has received high attention since its birth.With SDN network arc...Software-defined network(SDN)is a new form of network architecture that has programmability,ease of use,centralized control,and protocol independence.It has received high attention since its birth.With SDN network architecture,network management becomes more efficient,and programmable interfaces make network operations more flexible and can meet the different needs of various users.The mainstream communication protocol of SDN is OpenFlow,which contains aMatch Field in the flow table structure of the protocol,which matches the content of the packet header of the data received by the switch,and completes the corresponding actions according to the matching results,getting rid of the dependence on the protocol to avoid designing a new protocol.In order to effectively optimize the routing forSDN,this paper proposes a novel algorithm based on reinforcement learning.The proposed technique canmaximize numerous objectives to dynamically update the routing strategy,and it has great generality and is not reliant on any specific network state.The control of routing strategy is more complicated than many Q-learning-based algorithms due to the employment of reinforcement learning.The performance of the method is tested by experiments using the OMNe++simulator.The experimental results reveal that our PPO-based SDN routing control method has superior performance and stability than existing algorithms.展开更多
When applying Software-Defined Networks(SDN) to WANs,the SDN flexibility enables the cross-domain control to achieve a better control scalability.However,the control consistence is required by all the cross-domain ser...When applying Software-Defined Networks(SDN) to WANs,the SDN flexibility enables the cross-domain control to achieve a better control scalability.However,the control consistence is required by all the cross-domain services,to ensure the data plane configured in consensus for different domains.Such consistence process is complicated by potential failure and errors of WANs.In this paper,we propose a consistence layer to actively and passively snapshot the cross-domain control states,to reduce the complexities of service realizations.We implement the layer and evaluate performance in the PlanetLab testbed for the WAN emulation.The testbed conditions are extremely enlarged comparing to the real network.The results show its scalability,reliability and responsiveness in dealing with the control dynamics.In the normalized results,the active and passive snapshots are executed with the mean times of 1.873 s and 105 ms in135 controllers,indicating its readiness to be used in the real network.展开更多
Software-defined networking(SDN)plays a critical role in transforming networking from traditional to intelligent networking.The increasing demand for services from cloud users has increased the load on the network.An ...Software-defined networking(SDN)plays a critical role in transforming networking from traditional to intelligent networking.The increasing demand for services from cloud users has increased the load on the network.An efficient system must handle various loads and increasing needs representing the relationships and dependence of businesses on automated measurement systems and guarantee the quality of service(QoS).Themultiple paths from source to destination give a scope to select an optimal path by maintaining an equilibrium of load using some best algorithms.Moreover,the requests need to be transferred to reliable network elements.To address SDN’s current and future challenges,there is a need to know how artificial intelligence(AI)optimization techniques can efficiently balance the load.This study aims to explore two artificial intelligence optimization techniques,namely Ant Colony Optimization(ACO)and Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO),used for load balancing in SDN.Further,we identified that a modification to the existing optimization technique could improve the performance by using a reliable link and node to form the path to reach the target node and improve load balancing.Finally,we propose a conceptual framework for SDN futurology by evaluating node and link reliability,which can balance the load efficiently and improve QoS in SDN.展开更多
To cope with the rapid growth of mobile video, video providers have leveraged cloud technologies to deploy their mobile video service system for more cost-effective and scalable performance. The emergence of Software-...To cope with the rapid growth of mobile video, video providers have leveraged cloud technologies to deploy their mobile video service system for more cost-effective and scalable performance. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking(SDN) provides a promising solution to manage the underlying network. In this paper, we introduce an SDN-enabled cloud mobile video distribution architecture and propose a joint video placement, request dispatching and traffic management mechanism to improve user experience and reduce the system operational cost. We use a utility function to capture the two aspects of user experience: the level of satisfaction and average latency, and formulate the joint optimization problem as a mixed integer programming problem. We develop an optimal algorithm based on dual decomposition and prove its optimality. We conduct simulations to evaluate the performance of our algorithm and the results show that our strategy can effectively cut down the total cost and guarantee user experience.展开更多
Software-defined networking(SDN)algorithms are gaining increas-ing interest and are making networks flexible and agile.The basic idea of SDN is to move the control planes to more than one server’s named controllers a...Software-defined networking(SDN)algorithms are gaining increas-ing interest and are making networks flexible and agile.The basic idea of SDN is to move the control planes to more than one server’s named controllers and limit the data planes to numerous sending network components,enabling flexible and dynamic network management.A distinctive characteristic of SDN is that it can logically centralize the control plane by utilizing many physical controllers.The deployment of the controller—that is,the controller placement problem(CPP)—becomes a vital model challenge.Through the advancements of blockchain technology,data integrity between nodes can be enhanced with no requirement for a trusted third party.Using the lat-est developments in blockchain technology,this article designs a novel sea turtle foraging optimization algorithm for the controller placement problem(STFOA-CPP)with blockchain-based intrusion detection in an SDN environ-ment.The major intention of the STFOA-CPP technique is the maximization of lifetime,network connectivity,and load balancing with the minimization of latency.In addition,the STFOA-CPP technique is based on the sea turtles’food-searching characteristics of tracking the odour path of dimethyl sulphide(DMS)released from food sources.Moreover,the presented STFOA-CPP technique can adapt with the controller’s count mandated and the shift to controller mapping to variable network traffic.Finally,the blockchain can inspect the data integrity,determine significantly malicious input,and improve the robust nature of developing a trust relationship between sev-eral nodes in the SDN.To demonstrate the improved performance of the STFOA-CPP algorithm,a wide-ranging experimental analysis was carried out.The extensive comparison study highlighted the improved outcomes of the STFOA-CPP technique over other recent approaches.展开更多
Over the past few years,rapid advancements in the internet and communication technologies have led to increasingly intricate and diverse networking systems.As a result,greater intelligence is necessary to effectively ...Over the past few years,rapid advancements in the internet and communication technologies have led to increasingly intricate and diverse networking systems.As a result,greater intelligence is necessary to effectively manage,optimize,and maintain these systems.Due to their distributed nature,machine learning models are challenging to deploy in traditional networks.However,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)presents an opportunity to integrate intelligence into networks by offering a programmable architecture that separates data and control planes.SDN provides a centralized network view and allows for dynamic updates of flow rules and softwarebased traffic analysis.While the programmable nature of SDN makes it easier to deploy machine learning techniques,the centralized control logic also makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks.To address these issues,recent research has focused on developing powerful machine-learning methods for detecting and mitigating attacks in SDN environments.This paper highlighted the countermeasures for cyberattacks on SDN and how current machine learningbased solutions can overcome these emerging issues.We also discuss the pros and cons of using machine learning algorithms for detecting and mitigating these attacks.Finally,we highlighted research issues,gaps,and challenges in developing machine learning-based solutions to secure the SDN controller,to help the research and network community to develop more robust and reliable solutions.展开更多
Software Defined Networking(SDN) provides a flexible and convenient way to support fine-grained traffic-engineering(TE). Besides, SDN also provides better Quality of Experience(QoE) for customers. However, the policy ...Software Defined Networking(SDN) provides a flexible and convenient way to support fine-grained traffic-engineering(TE). Besides, SDN also provides better Quality of Experience(QoE) for customers. However, the policy of the evolution from legacy networks to the SDNs overemphasizes the controllability of the network or TE while ignoring the customers' benefit. Standing in the customers' position, we propose an optimization scheme, named as Optimal Migration Schedule based on Customers' Benefit(OMSB), to produce an optimized migration schedule and maximize the benefit of customers. Not only the quality and quantity of paths availed by migration, but also the number of flows from the customers that can use these multi-paths are taken into consideration for the scheduling. We compare the OMSB with other six migration schemes in terms of the benefit of customers. Our results suggest that the sequence of the migration plays a vital role for customers, especially in the early stages of the network migration to the SDN.展开更多
Zero Trust Network(ZTN)enhances network security through strict authentication and access control.However,in the ZTN,optimizing flow control to improve the quality of service is still facing challenges.Software Define...Zero Trust Network(ZTN)enhances network security through strict authentication and access control.However,in the ZTN,optimizing flow control to improve the quality of service is still facing challenges.Software Defined Network(SDN)provides solutions through centralized control and dynamic resource allocation,but the existing scheduling methods based on Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)are insufficient in terms of convergence speed and dynamic optimization capability.To solve these problems,this paper proposes DRL-AMIR,which is an efficient flow scheduling method for software defined ZTN.This method constructs a flow scheduling optimization model that comprehensively considers service delay,bandwidth occupation,and path hops.Additionally,it balances the differentiated requirements of delay-critical K-flows,bandwidth-intensive D-flows,and background B-flows through adaptiveweighting.Theproposed framework employs a customized state space comprising node labels,link bandwidth,delaymetrics,and path length.It incorporates an action space derived fromnode weights and a hybrid reward function that integrates both single-step and multi-step excitation mechanisms.Based on these components,a hierarchical architecture is designed,effectively integrating the data plane,control plane,and knowledge plane.In particular,the adaptive expert mechanism is introduced,which triggers the shortest path algorithm in the training process to accelerate convergence,reduce trial and error costs,and maintain stability.Experiments across diverse real-world network topologies demonstrate that DRL-AMIR achieves a 15–20%reduction in K-flow transmission delays,a 10–15%improvement in link bandwidth utilization compared to SPR,QoSR,and DRSIR,and a 30%faster convergence speed via adaptive expert mechanisms.展开更多
The rise of time-sensitive applications with broad geographical scope drives the development of time-sensitive networking(TSN)from intra-domain to inter-domain to ensure overall end-to-end connectivity requirements in...The rise of time-sensitive applications with broad geographical scope drives the development of time-sensitive networking(TSN)from intra-domain to inter-domain to ensure overall end-to-end connectivity requirements in heterogeneous deployments.When multiple TSN networks interconnect over non-TSN networks,all devices in the network need to be syn-chronized by sharing a uniform time reference.How-ever,most non-TSN networks are best-effort.Path delay asymmetry and random noise accumulation can introduce unpredictable time errors during end-to-end time synchronization.These factors can degrade syn-chronization performance.Therefore,cross-domain time synchronization becomes a challenging issue for multiple TSN networks interconnected by non-TSN networks.This paper presents a cross-domain time synchronization scheme that follows the software-defined TSN(SD-TSN)paradigm.It utilizes a com-bined control plane constructed by a coordinate con-troller and a domain controller for centralized control and management of cross-domain time synchroniza-tion.The general operation flow of the cross-domain time synchronization process is designed.The mecha-nism of cross-domain time synchronization is revealed by introducing a synchronization model and an error compensation method.A TSN cross-domain proto-type testbed is constructed for verification.Results show that the scheme can achieve end-to-end high-precision time synchronization with accuracy and sta-bility.展开更多
Optimizing routing and resource allocation in decentralized unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)networks remains challenging due to interference and rapidly changing topologies.The authors introduce a novel framework combinin...Optimizing routing and resource allocation in decentralized unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)networks remains challenging due to interference and rapidly changing topologies.The authors introduce a novel framework combining double deep Q-networks(DDQNs)and graph neural networks(GNNs)for joint routing and resource allocation.The framework uses GNNs to model the network topology and DDQNs to adaptively control routing and resource allocation,addressing interference and improving network performance.Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms traditional methods such as Closest-to-Destination(c2Dst),Max-SINR(mSINR),and Multi-Layer Perceptron(MLP)-based models,achieving approximately 23.5% improvement in throughput,50% increase in connection probability,and 17.6% reduction in number of hops,demonstrating its effectiveness in dynamic UAV networks.展开更多
The advent of sixth-generation(6G)networks introduces unprecedented challenges in achieving seamless connectivity,ultra-low latency,and efficient resource management in highly dynamic environments.Although fifth-gener...The advent of sixth-generation(6G)networks introduces unprecedented challenges in achieving seamless connectivity,ultra-low latency,and efficient resource management in highly dynamic environments.Although fifth-generation(5G)networks transformed mobile broadband and machine-type communications at massive scales,their properties of scaling,interference management,and latency remain a limitation in dense high mobility settings.To overcome these limitations,artificial intelligence(AI)and unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have emerged as potential solutions to develop versatile,dynamic,and energy-efficient communication systems.The study proposes an AI-based UAV architecture that utilizes cooperative reinforcement learning(CoRL)to manage an autonomous network.The UAVs collaborate by sharing local observations and real-time state exchanges to optimize user connectivity,movement directions,allocate power,and resource distribution.Unlike conventional centralized or autonomous methods,CoRL involves joint state sharing and conflict-sensitive reward shaping,which ensures fair coverage,less interference,and enhanced adaptability in a dynamic urban environment.Simulations conducted in smart city scenarios with 10 UAVs and 50 ground users demonstrate that the proposed CoRL-based UAV system increases user coverage by up to 10%,achieves convergence 40%faster,and reduces latency and energy consumption by 30%compared with centralized and decentralized baselines.Furthermore,the distributed nature of the algorithm ensures scalability and flexibility,making it well-suited for future large-scale 6G deployments.The results highlighted that AI-enabled UAV systems enhance connectivity,support ultra-reliable low-latency communications(URLLC),and improve 6G network efficiency.Future work will extend the framework with adaptive modulation,beamforming-aware positioning,and real-world testbed deployment.展开更多
Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks are common network attacks that primarily target Internet of Things(IoT)devices.They are critical for emerging wireless services,especially for applications with limited late...Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks are common network attacks that primarily target Internet of Things(IoT)devices.They are critical for emerging wireless services,especially for applications with limited latency.DDoS attacks pose significant risks to entrepreneurial businesses,preventing legitimate customers from accessing their websites.These attacks require intelligent analytics before processing service requests.Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks exploit vulnerabilities in IoT devices by launchingmulti-point distributed attacks.These attacks generate massive traffic that overwhelms the victim’s network,disrupting normal operations.The consequences of distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks are typically more severe in software-defined networks(SDNs)than in traditional networks.The centralised architecture of these networks can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities,as these weaknesses may not be effectively addressed in this model.The preliminary objective for detecting and mitigating distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks in software-defined networks(SDN)is to monitor traffic patterns and identify anomalies that indicate distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks.It implements measures to counter the effects ofDDoS attacks,and ensure network reliability and availability by leveraging the flexibility and programmability of SDN to adaptively respond to threats.The authors present a mechanism that leverages the OpenFlow and sFlow protocols to counter the threats posed by DDoS attacks.The results indicate that the proposed model effectively mitigates the negative effects of DDoS attacks in an SDN environment.展开更多
This paper investigates the traffic offloading optimization challenge in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks(SAGIN)through a novel Recursive Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization(RMAPPO)algorithm.The exponential g...This paper investigates the traffic offloading optimization challenge in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks(SAGIN)through a novel Recursive Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization(RMAPPO)algorithm.The exponential growth of mobile devices and data traffic has substantially increased network congestion,particularly in urban areas and regions with limited terrestrial infrastructure.Our approach jointly optimizes unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)trajectories and satellite-assisted offloading strategies to simultaneously maximize data throughput,minimize energy consumption,and maintain equitable resource distribution.The proposed RMAPPO framework incorporates recurrent neural networks(RNNs)to model temporal dependencies in UAV mobility patterns and utilizes a decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning architecture to reduce communication overhead while improving system robustness.The proposed RMAPPO algorithm was evaluated through simulation experiments,with the results indicating that it significantly enhances the cumulative traffic offloading rate of nodes and reduces the energy consumption of UAVs.展开更多
Skin diseases affect millions worldwide.Early detection is key to preventing disfigurement,lifelong disability,or death.Dermoscopic images acquired in primary-care settings show high intra-class visual similarity and ...Skin diseases affect millions worldwide.Early detection is key to preventing disfigurement,lifelong disability,or death.Dermoscopic images acquired in primary-care settings show high intra-class visual similarity and severe class imbalance,and occasional imaging artifacts can create ambiguity for state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks(CNNs).We frame skin lesion recognition as graph-based reasoning and,to ensure fair evaluation and avoid data leakage,adopt a strict lesion-level partitioning strategy.Each image is first over-segmented using SLIC(Simple Linear Iterative Clustering)to produce perceptually homogeneous superpixels.These superpixels form the nodes of a region-adjacency graph whose edges encode spatial continuity.Node attributes are 1280-dimensional embeddings extracted with a lightweight yet expressive EfficientNet-B0 backbone,providing strong representational power at modest computational cost.The resulting graphs are processed by a five-layer Graph Attention Network(GAT)that learns to weight inter-node relationships dynamically and aggregates multi-hop context before classifying lesions into seven classes with a log-softmax output.Extensive experiments on the DermaMNIST benchmark show the proposed pipeline achieves 88.35%accuracy and 98.04%AUC,outperforming contemporary CNNs,AutoML approaches,and alternative graph neural networks.An ablation study indicates EfficientNet-B0 produces superior node descriptors compared with ResNet-18 and DenseNet,and that roughly five GAT layers strike a good balance between being too shallow and over-deep while avoiding oversmoothing.The method requires no data augmentation or external metadata,making it a drop-in upgrade for clinical computer-aided diagnosis systems.展开更多
The rapid growth of distributed data-centric applications and AI workloads increases demand for low-latency,high-throughput communication,necessitating frequent and flexible updates to network routing configurations.H...The rapid growth of distributed data-centric applications and AI workloads increases demand for low-latency,high-throughput communication,necessitating frequent and flexible updates to network routing configurations.However,maintaining consistent forwarding states during these updates is challenging,particularly when rerouting multiple flows simultaneously.Existing approaches pay little attention to multi-flow update,where improper update sequences across data plane nodes may construct deadlock dependencies.Moreover,these methods typically involve excessive control-data plane interactions,incurring significant resource overhead and performance degradation.This paper presents P4LoF,an efficient loop-free update approach that enables the controller to reroute multiple flows through minimal interactions.P4LoF first utilizes a greedy-based algorithm to generate the shortest update dependency chain for the single-flow update.These chains are then dynamically merged into a dependency graph and resolved as a Shortest Common Super-sequence(SCS)problem to produce the update sequence of multi-flow update.To address deadlock dependencies in multi-flow updates,P4LoF builds a deadlock-fix forwarding model that leverages the flexible packet processing capabilities of the programmable data plane.Experimental results show that P4LoF reduces control-data plane interactions by at least 32.6%with modest overhead,while effectively guaranteeing loop-free consistency.展开更多
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61962016)the Ministry of Science and Technology of China(G2022033002L)+1 种基金National Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi(2022JJA170057)Guangxi Education Department’s Project on Improving the Basic Research Ability of Young and Middleaged Teachers in Universities(2023ky0812,Research on Statistical Network Delay Predictions in Large-scale SDNs).
文摘Accurate early classification of elephant flows(elephants)is important for network management and resource optimization.Elephant models,mainly based on the byte count of flows,can always achieve high accuracy,but not in a time-efficient manner.The time efficiency becomes even worse when the flows to be classified are sampled by flow entry timeout over Software-Defined Networks(SDNs)to achieve a better resource efficiency.This paper addresses this situation by combining co-training and Reinforcement Learning(RL)to enable a closed-loop classification approach that divides the entire classification process into episodes,each involving two elephant models.One predicts elephants and is retrained by a selection of flows automatically labeled online by the other.RL is used to formulate a reward function that estimates the values of the possible actions based on the current states of both models and further adjusts the ratio of flows to be labeled in each phase.Extensive evaluation based on real traffic traces shows that the proposed approach can stably predict elephants using the packets received in the first 10% of their lifetime with an accuracy of over 80%,and using only about 10% more control channel bandwidth than the baseline over the evolved SDNs.
文摘Software-defined networking(SDN)is an innovative paradigm that separates the control and data planes,introducing centralized network control.SDN is increasingly being adopted by Carrier Grade networks,offering enhanced networkmanagement capabilities than those of traditional networks.However,because SDN is designed to ensure high-level service availability,it faces additional challenges.One of themost critical challenges is ensuring efficient detection and recovery from link failures in the data plane.Such failures can significantly impact network performance and lead to service outages,making resiliency a key concern for the effective adoption of SDN.Since the recovery process is intrinsically dependent on timely failure detection,this research surveys and analyzes the current literature on both failure detection and recovery approaches in SDN.The survey provides a critical comparison of existing failure detection techniques,highlighting their advantages and disadvantages.Additionally,it examines the current failure recovery methods,categorized as either restoration-based or protection-based,and offers a comprehensive comparison of their strengths and limitations.Lastly,future research challenges and directions are discussed to address the shortcomings of existing failure recovery methods.
基金fully supported by GUET Excellent Graduate Thesis Program(Grant No.19YJPYBS03)Innovation Project of Guangxi Graduate Education(Grant No.YCBZ2022109)New Technology Research University Cooperation Project of the 34th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation,2021(Grant No.SF2126007)。
文摘In Software-Defined Networks(SDNs),determining how to efficiently achieve Quality of Service(QoS)-aware routing is challenging but critical for significantly improving the performance of a network,where the metrics of QoS can be defined as,for example,average latency,packet loss ratio,and throughput.The SDN controller can use network statistics and a Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)method to resolve this challenge.In this paper,we formulate dynamic routing in an SDN as a Markov decision process and propose a DRL algorithm called the Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic QoS-aware Routing Optimization Mechanism(AQROM)to determine routing strategies that balance the traffic loads in the network.AQROM can improve the QoS of the network and reduce the training time via dynamic routing strategy updates;that is,the reward function can be dynamically and promptly altered based on the optimization objective regardless of the network topology and traffic pattern.AQROM can be considered as one-step optimization and a black-box routing mechanism in high-dimensional input and output sets for both discrete and continuous states,and actions with respect to the operations in the SDN.Extensive simulations were conducted using OMNeT++and the results demonstrated that AQROM 1)achieved much faster and stable convergence than the Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient(DDPG)and Advantage Actor-Critic(A2C),2)incurred a lower packet loss ratio and latency than Open Shortest Path First(OSPF),DDPG,and A2C,and 3)resulted in higher and more stable throughput than OSPF,DDPG,and A2C.
基金supported in part by the National High Technology Research and Development Program(863 Program)of China under Grant No.2011AA01A101the National High Technology Research and Development Program(863 Program)of China under Grant No.2013AA01330the National High Technology Research and Development Program(863 Program)of China under Grant No.2013AA013303
文摘By decoupling control plane and data plane,Software-Defined Networking(SDN) approach simplifies network management and speeds up network innovations.These benefits have led not only to prototypes,but also real SDN deployments.For wide-area SDN deployments,multiple controllers are often required,and the placement of these controllers becomes a particularly important task in the SDN context.This paper studies the problem of placing controllers in SDNs,so as to maximize the reliability of SDN control networks.We present a novel metric,called expected percentage of control path loss,to characterize the reliability of SDN control networks.We formulate the reliability-aware control placement problem,prove its NP-hardness,and examine several placement algorithms that can solve this problem.Through extensive simulations using real topologies,we show how the number of controllers and their placement influence the reliability of SDN control networks.Besides,we also found that,through strategic controller placement,the reliability of SDN control networks can be significantly improved without introducing unacceptable switch-to-controller latencies.
文摘As a new networking paradigm,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)enables us to cope with the limitations of traditional networks.SDN uses a controller that has a global view of the network and switch devices which act as packet forwarding hardware,known as“OpenFlow switches”.Since load balancing service is essential to distribute workload across servers in data centers,we propose an effective load balancing scheme in SDN,using a genetic programming approach,called Genetic Programming based Load Balancing(GPLB).We formulate the problem to find a path:1)with the best bottleneck switch which has the lowest capacity within bottleneck switches of each path,2)with the shortest path,and 3)requiring the less possible operations.For the purpose of choosing the real-time least loaded path,GPLB immediately calculates the integrated load of paths based on the information that receives from the SDN controller.Hence,in this design,the controller sends the load information of each path to the load balancing algorithm periodically and then the load balancing algorithm returns a least loaded path to the controller.In this paper,we use the Mininet emulator and the OpenDaylight controller to evaluate the effectiveness of the GPLB.The simulative study of the GPLB shows that there is a big improvement in performance metrics and the latency and the jitter are minimized.The GPLB also has the maximum throughput in comparison with related works and has performed better in the heavy traffic situation.The results show that our model stands smartly while not increasing further overhead.
基金The researchers would like to thank the Deanship of Scientific Research,Qassim University for funding the publication of this project.
文摘Software-defined network(SDN)is a new form of network architecture that has programmability,ease of use,centralized control,and protocol independence.It has received high attention since its birth.With SDN network architecture,network management becomes more efficient,and programmable interfaces make network operations more flexible and can meet the different needs of various users.The mainstream communication protocol of SDN is OpenFlow,which contains aMatch Field in the flow table structure of the protocol,which matches the content of the packet header of the data received by the switch,and completes the corresponding actions according to the matching results,getting rid of the dependence on the protocol to avoid designing a new protocol.In order to effectively optimize the routing forSDN,this paper proposes a novel algorithm based on reinforcement learning.The proposed technique canmaximize numerous objectives to dynamically update the routing strategy,and it has great generality and is not reliant on any specific network state.The control of routing strategy is more complicated than many Q-learning-based algorithms due to the employment of reinforcement learning.The performance of the method is tested by experiments using the OMNe++simulator.The experimental results reveal that our PPO-based SDN routing control method has superior performance and stability than existing algorithms.
基金supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB315903)the Program for Key Science and Technology Innovation Team of Zhejiang Province(2011R50010,2013TD20)+3 种基金the National High Technology Research Program of China(2015AA016103)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(61379118)the Research Fund of ZTE CorporationJiaxing Science and Technology Project (No.2014AY21021)
文摘When applying Software-Defined Networks(SDN) to WANs,the SDN flexibility enables the cross-domain control to achieve a better control scalability.However,the control consistence is required by all the cross-domain services,to ensure the data plane configured in consensus for different domains.Such consistence process is complicated by potential failure and errors of WANs.In this paper,we propose a consistence layer to actively and passively snapshot the cross-domain control states,to reduce the complexities of service realizations.We implement the layer and evaluate performance in the PlanetLab testbed for the WAN emulation.The testbed conditions are extremely enlarged comparing to the real network.The results show its scalability,reliability and responsiveness in dealing with the control dynamics.In the normalized results,the active and passive snapshots are executed with the mean times of 1.873 s and 105 ms in135 controllers,indicating its readiness to be used in the real network.
基金The authors received Excellent Graduate Assistant funding from Universiti Kuala Lumpur for this study.
文摘Software-defined networking(SDN)plays a critical role in transforming networking from traditional to intelligent networking.The increasing demand for services from cloud users has increased the load on the network.An efficient system must handle various loads and increasing needs representing the relationships and dependence of businesses on automated measurement systems and guarantee the quality of service(QoS).Themultiple paths from source to destination give a scope to select an optimal path by maintaining an equilibrium of load using some best algorithms.Moreover,the requests need to be transferred to reliable network elements.To address SDN’s current and future challenges,there is a need to know how artificial intelligence(AI)optimization techniques can efficiently balance the load.This study aims to explore two artificial intelligence optimization techniques,namely Ant Colony Optimization(ACO)and Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO),used for load balancing in SDN.Further,we identified that a modification to the existing optimization technique could improve the performance by using a reliable link and node to form the path to reach the target node and improve load balancing.Finally,we propose a conceptual framework for SDN futurology by evaluating node and link reliability,which can balance the load efficiently and improve QoS in SDN.
基金supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.61233003)National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.61503358)
文摘To cope with the rapid growth of mobile video, video providers have leveraged cloud technologies to deploy their mobile video service system for more cost-effective and scalable performance. The emergence of Software-Defined Networking(SDN) provides a promising solution to manage the underlying network. In this paper, we introduce an SDN-enabled cloud mobile video distribution architecture and propose a joint video placement, request dispatching and traffic management mechanism to improve user experience and reduce the system operational cost. We use a utility function to capture the two aspects of user experience: the level of satisfaction and average latency, and formulate the joint optimization problem as a mixed integer programming problem. We develop an optimal algorithm based on dual decomposition and prove its optimality. We conduct simulations to evaluate the performance of our algorithm and the results show that our strategy can effectively cut down the total cost and guarantee user experience.
文摘Software-defined networking(SDN)algorithms are gaining increas-ing interest and are making networks flexible and agile.The basic idea of SDN is to move the control planes to more than one server’s named controllers and limit the data planes to numerous sending network components,enabling flexible and dynamic network management.A distinctive characteristic of SDN is that it can logically centralize the control plane by utilizing many physical controllers.The deployment of the controller—that is,the controller placement problem(CPP)—becomes a vital model challenge.Through the advancements of blockchain technology,data integrity between nodes can be enhanced with no requirement for a trusted third party.Using the lat-est developments in blockchain technology,this article designs a novel sea turtle foraging optimization algorithm for the controller placement problem(STFOA-CPP)with blockchain-based intrusion detection in an SDN environ-ment.The major intention of the STFOA-CPP technique is the maximization of lifetime,network connectivity,and load balancing with the minimization of latency.In addition,the STFOA-CPP technique is based on the sea turtles’food-searching characteristics of tracking the odour path of dimethyl sulphide(DMS)released from food sources.Moreover,the presented STFOA-CPP technique can adapt with the controller’s count mandated and the shift to controller mapping to variable network traffic.Finally,the blockchain can inspect the data integrity,determine significantly malicious input,and improve the robust nature of developing a trust relationship between sev-eral nodes in the SDN.To demonstrate the improved performance of the STFOA-CPP algorithm,a wide-ranging experimental analysis was carried out.The extensive comparison study highlighted the improved outcomes of the STFOA-CPP technique over other recent approaches.
文摘Over the past few years,rapid advancements in the internet and communication technologies have led to increasingly intricate and diverse networking systems.As a result,greater intelligence is necessary to effectively manage,optimize,and maintain these systems.Due to their distributed nature,machine learning models are challenging to deploy in traditional networks.However,Software-Defined Networking(SDN)presents an opportunity to integrate intelligence into networks by offering a programmable architecture that separates data and control planes.SDN provides a centralized network view and allows for dynamic updates of flow rules and softwarebased traffic analysis.While the programmable nature of SDN makes it easier to deploy machine learning techniques,the centralized control logic also makes it vulnerable to cyberattacks.To address these issues,recent research has focused on developing powerful machine-learning methods for detecting and mitigating attacks in SDN environments.This paper highlighted the countermeasures for cyberattacks on SDN and how current machine learningbased solutions can overcome these emerging issues.We also discuss the pros and cons of using machine learning algorithms for detecting and mitigating these attacks.Finally,we highlighted research issues,gaps,and challenges in developing machine learning-based solutions to secure the SDN controller,to help the research and network community to develop more robust and reliable solutions.
基金supported by Joint Funds of National Natural Science Foundation of China and Xinjiang under code U1603261the Research Fund of Ministry of Education-China Mobile under Grant No. MCM20160304the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
文摘Software Defined Networking(SDN) provides a flexible and convenient way to support fine-grained traffic-engineering(TE). Besides, SDN also provides better Quality of Experience(QoE) for customers. However, the policy of the evolution from legacy networks to the SDNs overemphasizes the controllability of the network or TE while ignoring the customers' benefit. Standing in the customers' position, we propose an optimization scheme, named as Optimal Migration Schedule based on Customers' Benefit(OMSB), to produce an optimized migration schedule and maximize the benefit of customers. Not only the quality and quantity of paths availed by migration, but also the number of flows from the customers that can use these multi-paths are taken into consideration for the scheduling. We compare the OMSB with other six migration schemes in terms of the benefit of customers. Our results suggest that the sequence of the migration plays a vital role for customers, especially in the early stages of the network migration to the SDN.
基金supported in part by Scientific Research Fund of Zhejiang Provincial Education Department under Grant Y202351110in part by Huzhou Science and Technology Plan Project under Grant 2024YZ23+1 种基金in part by Research Fund of National Key Laboratory of Advanced Communication Networks under Grant SCX23641X004in part by Postgraduate Research and Innovation Project of Huzhou University under Grant 2024KYCX50.
文摘Zero Trust Network(ZTN)enhances network security through strict authentication and access control.However,in the ZTN,optimizing flow control to improve the quality of service is still facing challenges.Software Defined Network(SDN)provides solutions through centralized control and dynamic resource allocation,but the existing scheduling methods based on Deep Reinforcement Learning(DRL)are insufficient in terms of convergence speed and dynamic optimization capability.To solve these problems,this paper proposes DRL-AMIR,which is an efficient flow scheduling method for software defined ZTN.This method constructs a flow scheduling optimization model that comprehensively considers service delay,bandwidth occupation,and path hops.Additionally,it balances the differentiated requirements of delay-critical K-flows,bandwidth-intensive D-flows,and background B-flows through adaptiveweighting.Theproposed framework employs a customized state space comprising node labels,link bandwidth,delaymetrics,and path length.It incorporates an action space derived fromnode weights and a hybrid reward function that integrates both single-step and multi-step excitation mechanisms.Based on these components,a hierarchical architecture is designed,effectively integrating the data plane,control plane,and knowledge plane.In particular,the adaptive expert mechanism is introduced,which triggers the shortest path algorithm in the training process to accelerate convergence,reduce trial and error costs,and maintain stability.Experiments across diverse real-world network topologies demonstrate that DRL-AMIR achieves a 15–20%reduction in K-flow transmission delays,a 10–15%improvement in link bandwidth utilization compared to SPR,QoSR,and DRSIR,and a 30%faster convergence speed via adaptive expert mechanisms.
基金supported in part by National Key R&D Program of China(Grant No.2022YFC3803700)in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.92067102)in part by the project of Beijing Laboratory of Advanced Information Networks.
文摘The rise of time-sensitive applications with broad geographical scope drives the development of time-sensitive networking(TSN)from intra-domain to inter-domain to ensure overall end-to-end connectivity requirements in heterogeneous deployments.When multiple TSN networks interconnect over non-TSN networks,all devices in the network need to be syn-chronized by sharing a uniform time reference.How-ever,most non-TSN networks are best-effort.Path delay asymmetry and random noise accumulation can introduce unpredictable time errors during end-to-end time synchronization.These factors can degrade syn-chronization performance.Therefore,cross-domain time synchronization becomes a challenging issue for multiple TSN networks interconnected by non-TSN networks.This paper presents a cross-domain time synchronization scheme that follows the software-defined TSN(SD-TSN)paradigm.It utilizes a com-bined control plane constructed by a coordinate con-troller and a domain controller for centralized control and management of cross-domain time synchroniza-tion.The general operation flow of the cross-domain time synchronization process is designed.The mecha-nism of cross-domain time synchronization is revealed by introducing a synchronization model and an error compensation method.A TSN cross-domain proto-type testbed is constructed for verification.Results show that the scheme can achieve end-to-end high-precision time synchronization with accuracy and sta-bility.
文摘Optimizing routing and resource allocation in decentralized unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)networks remains challenging due to interference and rapidly changing topologies.The authors introduce a novel framework combining double deep Q-networks(DDQNs)and graph neural networks(GNNs)for joint routing and resource allocation.The framework uses GNNs to model the network topology and DDQNs to adaptively control routing and resource allocation,addressing interference and improving network performance.Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms traditional methods such as Closest-to-Destination(c2Dst),Max-SINR(mSINR),and Multi-Layer Perceptron(MLP)-based models,achieving approximately 23.5% improvement in throughput,50% increase in connection probability,and 17.6% reduction in number of hops,demonstrating its effectiveness in dynamic UAV networks.
基金supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF)grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT)(RS-2025-00559546)supported by the IITP(Institute of Information&Coummunications Technology Planning&Evaluation)-ITRC(Information Technology Research Center)grant funded by the Korea government(Ministry of Science and ICT)(IITP-2025-RS-2023-00259004).
文摘The advent of sixth-generation(6G)networks introduces unprecedented challenges in achieving seamless connectivity,ultra-low latency,and efficient resource management in highly dynamic environments.Although fifth-generation(5G)networks transformed mobile broadband and machine-type communications at massive scales,their properties of scaling,interference management,and latency remain a limitation in dense high mobility settings.To overcome these limitations,artificial intelligence(AI)and unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have emerged as potential solutions to develop versatile,dynamic,and energy-efficient communication systems.The study proposes an AI-based UAV architecture that utilizes cooperative reinforcement learning(CoRL)to manage an autonomous network.The UAVs collaborate by sharing local observations and real-time state exchanges to optimize user connectivity,movement directions,allocate power,and resource distribution.Unlike conventional centralized or autonomous methods,CoRL involves joint state sharing and conflict-sensitive reward shaping,which ensures fair coverage,less interference,and enhanced adaptability in a dynamic urban environment.Simulations conducted in smart city scenarios with 10 UAVs and 50 ground users demonstrate that the proposed CoRL-based UAV system increases user coverage by up to 10%,achieves convergence 40%faster,and reduces latency and energy consumption by 30%compared with centralized and decentralized baselines.Furthermore,the distributed nature of the algorithm ensures scalability and flexibility,making it well-suited for future large-scale 6G deployments.The results highlighted that AI-enabled UAV systems enhance connectivity,support ultra-reliable low-latency communications(URLLC),and improve 6G network efficiency.Future work will extend the framework with adaptive modulation,beamforming-aware positioning,and real-world testbed deployment.
基金supported by the Deanship of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research at Qassim University for financial support(QU-APC-2025).
文摘Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks are common network attacks that primarily target Internet of Things(IoT)devices.They are critical for emerging wireless services,especially for applications with limited latency.DDoS attacks pose significant risks to entrepreneurial businesses,preventing legitimate customers from accessing their websites.These attacks require intelligent analytics before processing service requests.Distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks exploit vulnerabilities in IoT devices by launchingmulti-point distributed attacks.These attacks generate massive traffic that overwhelms the victim’s network,disrupting normal operations.The consequences of distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks are typically more severe in software-defined networks(SDNs)than in traditional networks.The centralised architecture of these networks can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities,as these weaknesses may not be effectively addressed in this model.The preliminary objective for detecting and mitigating distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks in software-defined networks(SDN)is to monitor traffic patterns and identify anomalies that indicate distributed denial of service(DDoS)attacks.It implements measures to counter the effects ofDDoS attacks,and ensure network reliability and availability by leveraging the flexibility and programmability of SDN to adaptively respond to threats.The authors present a mechanism that leverages the OpenFlow and sFlow protocols to counter the threats posed by DDoS attacks.The results indicate that the proposed model effectively mitigates the negative effects of DDoS attacks in an SDN environment.
文摘This paper investigates the traffic offloading optimization challenge in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks(SAGIN)through a novel Recursive Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization(RMAPPO)algorithm.The exponential growth of mobile devices and data traffic has substantially increased network congestion,particularly in urban areas and regions with limited terrestrial infrastructure.Our approach jointly optimizes unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)trajectories and satellite-assisted offloading strategies to simultaneously maximize data throughput,minimize energy consumption,and maintain equitable resource distribution.The proposed RMAPPO framework incorporates recurrent neural networks(RNNs)to model temporal dependencies in UAV mobility patterns and utilizes a decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning architecture to reduce communication overhead while improving system robustness.The proposed RMAPPO algorithm was evaluated through simulation experiments,with the results indicating that it significantly enhances the cumulative traffic offloading rate of nodes and reduces the energy consumption of UAVs.
基金funded by the Deanship of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research at Jouf University under grant No.(DGSSR-2025-02-01296).
文摘Skin diseases affect millions worldwide.Early detection is key to preventing disfigurement,lifelong disability,or death.Dermoscopic images acquired in primary-care settings show high intra-class visual similarity and severe class imbalance,and occasional imaging artifacts can create ambiguity for state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks(CNNs).We frame skin lesion recognition as graph-based reasoning and,to ensure fair evaluation and avoid data leakage,adopt a strict lesion-level partitioning strategy.Each image is first over-segmented using SLIC(Simple Linear Iterative Clustering)to produce perceptually homogeneous superpixels.These superpixels form the nodes of a region-adjacency graph whose edges encode spatial continuity.Node attributes are 1280-dimensional embeddings extracted with a lightweight yet expressive EfficientNet-B0 backbone,providing strong representational power at modest computational cost.The resulting graphs are processed by a five-layer Graph Attention Network(GAT)that learns to weight inter-node relationships dynamically and aggregates multi-hop context before classifying lesions into seven classes with a log-softmax output.Extensive experiments on the DermaMNIST benchmark show the proposed pipeline achieves 88.35%accuracy and 98.04%AUC,outperforming contemporary CNNs,AutoML approaches,and alternative graph neural networks.An ablation study indicates EfficientNet-B0 produces superior node descriptors compared with ResNet-18 and DenseNet,and that roughly five GAT layers strike a good balance between being too shallow and over-deep while avoiding oversmoothing.The method requires no data augmentation or external metadata,making it a drop-in upgrade for clinical computer-aided diagnosis systems.
基金supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2022YFB2901501in part by the Science and Technology Innovation leading Talents Subsidy Project of Central Plains under Grant 244200510038.
文摘The rapid growth of distributed data-centric applications and AI workloads increases demand for low-latency,high-throughput communication,necessitating frequent and flexible updates to network routing configurations.However,maintaining consistent forwarding states during these updates is challenging,particularly when rerouting multiple flows simultaneously.Existing approaches pay little attention to multi-flow update,where improper update sequences across data plane nodes may construct deadlock dependencies.Moreover,these methods typically involve excessive control-data plane interactions,incurring significant resource overhead and performance degradation.This paper presents P4LoF,an efficient loop-free update approach that enables the controller to reroute multiple flows through minimal interactions.P4LoF first utilizes a greedy-based algorithm to generate the shortest update dependency chain for the single-flow update.These chains are then dynamically merged into a dependency graph and resolved as a Shortest Common Super-sequence(SCS)problem to produce the update sequence of multi-flow update.To address deadlock dependencies in multi-flow updates,P4LoF builds a deadlock-fix forwarding model that leverages the flexible packet processing capabilities of the programmable data plane.Experimental results show that P4LoF reduces control-data plane interactions by at least 32.6%with modest overhead,while effectively guaranteeing loop-free consistency.