Controller Placement with Respect to Controller Reachability

In this paper we investigate the controller placement problem on networks using controller reachability as the network performance metric. This metric is defined as the probability that each node can reach at least one controller, given that each link is operational with a fixed probability. By exploring placements for more than 100 real-world networks and by varying the number of controllers from two to five, we find that controller reachability varies greatly with different placements. Obviously, increasing the number of controllers increases the controller reachability. However, the extent of this increase depends on the strategy with which the controllers are placed. The findings indicate that efficient controller placement strategies should be developed to ensure good network performance. In this research, we propose four controller placement strategies. One strategy is based on topological network metrics: node degree and path length between controllers and nodes. The other three heuristic strategies are the greedy algorithm, the classic genetic algorithm and the heuristic genetic algorithm. By validating strategies on real-world networks, we find that all four strategies work well to solve the controller placement problem with respect to controller reachability.