EVALUATING THE SCALABILITY AND FLEXIBILITY OF SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING (SDN) IN DATA CENTER ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

In the contemporary digital landscape, data centers are the backbone of countless applications and services, providing the computational power and storage necessary to support everything from small businesses to global enterprises.
Objective: The main objective of the study is to find the scalability and flexibility of software-defined networking (SDN) in data center environments.
Methodology of the study: This comprehensive retrospective study was conducted at University of Westcliff California USA with collaboration at Ziauddin University Karachi during June 2022 to December 2023. The methodology integrates theoretical analysis, simulation modeling, empirical data collection, and real-world case studies to provide a comprehensive evaluation. An initial review of the related literature is conducted to get familiar with the fundamentals, frameworks, and OSNs that are associated with the implementation of SDN.
Results: The simulation results indicate that the SDN-based network reduces latency by 30% and improves throughput by 20% compared to the traditional network. The SDN-based network achieved a latency of 7 milliseconds, which is 30% lower than the traditional network's 10 milliseconds. Additionally, the throughput for the SDN-based network was 1.2 Gbps, a 20% improvement over the traditional network's 1.0 Gbps.
Conclusion: SDN offers transformative potential for data center environments, providing significant improvements in scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. By addressing the challenges and leveraging SDN's capabilities, data center operators can create more resilient, adaptive, and high-performing networks.