PolicyCache-SDN: Hierarchical Intra-Path Learning for Adaptive SDN Traffic Control

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Jia, Wenyang, Wang, Jingjing, Yan, Ziwei, Liu, Tanren, Ren, Yakun, Lei, Kai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Jia, Wenyang
Wang, Jingjing
Yan, Ziwei
Liu, Tanren
Ren, Yakun
Lei, Kai
author_facet Jia, Wenyang
Wang, Jingjing
Yan, Ziwei
Liu, Tanren
Ren, Yakun
Lei, Kai
contents Software defined networks offer global visibility, yet centralized control loops are too slow for transient congestion and bursty traffic dynamics. Existing learned traffic control schemes often rely on offline training, making them fragile under distribution shifts. We present PolicyCache-SDN, a hierarchical SDN traffic control framework that enables local online adaptation under centralized policy control. Its key abstraction is a policy envelope: the controller compiles network wide intent into bounded per path action spaces, while edge agents learn and execute metering, queueing, and rerouting decisions only within those bounds. Policy envelopes also make local actions auditable and reversible when they affect shared bottlenecks. Evaluation on a 1,024 host software SDN testbed shows that PolicyCache-SDN improves average core link utilization by 35.5% over Static ECMP and 18.3% over Centralized TE. It reduces elephant flow P99 FCT by 34.3% over end host congestion control, lowers SLA violations from 18.2% to 6.8%, and uses less than 2% CPU and 12 MB memory per edge agent. The source code is available in an anonymized repository at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/JCC2026-PolicyCache-SDN/.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_09473
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PolicyCache-SDN: Hierarchical Intra-Path Learning for Adaptive SDN Traffic Control
Jia, Wenyang
Wang, Jingjing
Yan, Ziwei
Liu, Tanren
Ren, Yakun
Lei, Kai
Networking and Internet Architecture
Software defined networks offer global visibility, yet centralized control loops are too slow for transient congestion and bursty traffic dynamics. Existing learned traffic control schemes often rely on offline training, making them fragile under distribution shifts. We present PolicyCache-SDN, a hierarchical SDN traffic control framework that enables local online adaptation under centralized policy control. Its key abstraction is a policy envelope: the controller compiles network wide intent into bounded per path action spaces, while edge agents learn and execute metering, queueing, and rerouting decisions only within those bounds. Policy envelopes also make local actions auditable and reversible when they affect shared bottlenecks. Evaluation on a 1,024 host software SDN testbed shows that PolicyCache-SDN improves average core link utilization by 35.5% over Static ECMP and 18.3% over Centralized TE. It reduces elephant flow P99 FCT by 34.3% over end host congestion control, lowers SLA violations from 18.2% to 6.8%, and uses less than 2% CPU and 12 MB memory per edge agent. The source code is available in an anonymized repository at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/JCC2026-PolicyCache-SDN/.
title PolicyCache-SDN: Hierarchical Intra-Path Learning for Adaptive SDN Traffic Control
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09473