Abstract
In Software Defined Networking (SDN) critical control plane functions are offloaded to a software entity known as
the SDN controller. Today’s SDN controllers are complex software systems, owing to heterogeneity of networks and forwarding
devices they support, and are inherently prone to bugs. Our
previous work showed that Software Reliability Growth Models
(SRGM) can model the stochastic nature of bug manifestation
process open source SDN controllers. In this article we focus
on different applications of our SRGM framework crucial for
an efficient management of SDN-based networks. We provide
guidelines for network operators to decide when the controller
software is mature enough to be deployed in operational environment, based on the reliability requirements of network
applications, and quantify the marginal benefits of the prolonged
testing phase on the software quality. We show how the accuracy
of software reliability prediction in the early phase of the software
lifecycle can be improved by extrapolating the behaviour of
previous controller software releases. We also propose software
maturity metrics, that can be used by operators to discriminate
between the competing SDN controller designs, i.e., ONOS and
OpenDaylight, when software reliability is a major concern.
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