INTRODUCTION
In addition to satisfy the requirement for high-speed and
seamless access, computer networks need to provide good
security, availability, network behavior monitoring,
manageability, dynamic reconfiguration, and other capabilities.
However, forwarding, control and management functions
are closely coupled in current networks. It can be exploited and
cause a series of issues, such as cross-plane attacks, inefficient
network control, inefficient network situational awareness,
hard network maintaining and upgrading.
Cross-plane attacks: Network users can attack the general
network infrastructure (such as domain name service and
routing services, etc.). In current computer networks, the
control information and user data are mixed in a channel for
transmission. Attacks in the data plane such as worms or denial
of service attack can cause network congestion, which will
affect the transmission of routing and other control information.
And the second-order effects of network layering will lead to a
chain reaction of the control system, which will greatly affect
the network availability. Furthermore, the end system users can
initiate direct attacks to the control plane such as routing
tampering, which will cause more serious impact on packet
forwarding.