EFFICIENT LOAD BALANCING MECHANISM FOR SWITCHES IN A SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORK

摘要

A method is implemented by a network device where the method is for autonomous dynamic load balancing at the network device functioning as a data plane node (DPN) in a software defined networking (SDN) network. The DPN forwards data traffic to a set of load-balanced virtual network function (VNF) instances proportionate to a weighting of load balance for the set of load-balanced VNF instances. The method analyzes collected timestamps for data traffic that traversed the set of load-balanced VNF instances to determine processing delay for each VNF instance in the set of load-balanced VNF instances and updates the weighting of load balance to reflect determined delay times for each VNF instance.