Evaluation of Load Balancing Technique on Web Servers Using Round Robin
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Date
2022-12
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Lead City University
Abstract
Traditional networking architectures have many significant limitations that must be overcome to meet modern IT requirements. To overcome these limitations; Software Defined Networking (SDN) is taking place as the new networking approach. One of the major issues of traditional networks is that they use static switches that cause poor utilization of the network resources. Another issue is the packet loss and delay in case of switch breakdown. This project proposes an implementation of a dynamic load balancing algorithm for SDN based data center network to overcome these issues. In a data center environment, the load balancer is an integral part of the networking ecosystem. The primary function of a load balancer is to distribute traffic among a cluster of servers such that a single server does not become over-utilized and ensure that critical services keep running. Software Defined Networking (SDN) offers a cost-effective and flexible approach in implementing a load balancer. Moving away from traditional hardware-based networking approach, this project implements load balancing with the help of software. The SDN approach reduces the cost, offers flexibility in configuration, reduces time to deploy, provides automation and facilitates building a network without requiring the knowledge of any vendor-specific software/hardware. A test-bed has been implemented using Mininet software to emulate the network, and OpenDaylight platform (ODL) as SDN controller. Python programming language is used to define a fat-tree network topology and to write the load balancing algorithm program. Finally, iPerf is used to test network performance. The network was tested before and after running the load balancing algorithm. The testing focused on some of Quality of Service (QoS) parameters such as throughput, latency, bandwidth, delay, jitter, and packet loss between two servers in the fat-tree network. The algorithm increased throughput with at least 35.8%, and also increased the network utilization within the system.
Keywords: Application Programmable Interface (API), Load Balancer, OpenFlow, Round Robin, Software Defined Networking (SDN).
Word Count: 300