A Survey of Deployment Solutions and Optimization Strategies for Hybrid SDN Networks

© 1998-2012 IEEE. A hybrid software defined networks (SDN) network contains both traditional and SDN network, which combines the robustness of traditional protocols with the flexibility of SDN while avoiding their limitations and incompatibility. However, a hybrid SDN network comes with its own set of challenges, including error-prone deployment processes, risks of inconsistency, and complex incremental deployment strategies. In this paper, we present a survey of the deployment solutions and optimization strategies for hybrid SDN networks. We systematically review solutions to control plane and data plane deployments, and describe typical use cases of hybrid SDN networks. We discuss and compare various optimization strategies from perspectives of traffic engineering, resource saving, network control capacity, and network security. This paper aims to provide insights to researchers into the future development of hybrid SDN networks and inspire more efforts in this area