Detection of Network Threats Using Software Defined Networks

Abstract

Security is one of the major topics in networking. Nowadays, most companies and organizations spend lots of money on expensive firewalls to enforce security. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new promising technology that can provide cost-efficient solutions with centralized management and programming flexibility. This research work proposes a new approach to network security, which is rapidly developing in modern computer and network industry. By using Software Defined Networking (SDN) with OpenFlow protocol technology, a robust and powerful virtual firewall can be implemented to manage the forwarding behavior of OpenFlow switch. This firewall module can detect and prevent Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and any parallel streams of traffic based on predefined polices and rules that are configurable. This research demonstrates remarkable performance of switch module and firewall module when handling TCP traffic comparing to traditional switch. Firewall module suffers while handling UDP packets due to its security policies and required processes.