Mitigating DoS Attacks in SDN Using Offloading Path Strategies

Abstract

Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) were created to facilitate the management and control of the network. However, the security problem is still unresolved. To avoid the DoS attacks caused by links exceeding the bandwidth load (such as traffic flooding and security loopholes), the most simple mitigation solution is to offload the data by transferring it to other links. However, the transfer of information could lead to high bandwidth loads on other links. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a method called “Avoid Passing High Utilization Bandwidth (APHUB),” which aims to (1) prevent the unloaded data putting additional load on the links when passing through the high bandwidth and (2) find a suitable new path. A comparison of the maximum bandwidth utilization using the proposed method with that of other algorithms showed that this method consistently produced the smallest bandwidth utilization; we thus consider it a better mitigation method than those presented previously.