In software-defined networking (SDN) networks, unlike traditional networks, the control plane is located separately in a device or program. One of the most critical problems in these networks is a controller placement problem, which has a significant impact on the network’s overall performance. This paper attempts to provide a solution to this problem aiming to reduce the operational cost of the network and improve their survivability and load balancing. The researchers have proposed a suitable framework called kernel search introducing integer programming formulations to address the controller placement problem. It demonstrates through careful computational studies that the formulations can design networks with much less installation cost while accepting a general connected topology among controllers and user-defined survivability parameters. The researchers used the proposed framework on six different topologies then analyzed and compared with Iterated Local Search (ILS) and Expansion model for the controller placement problem (EMCPP) along with considering several evaluation criteria. The results show that the proposed framework outperforms the ILS and EMCPP. Thus, the proposed framework has a 38.53% and 38.02% improvement in reducing network implementation costs than EMCPP and ILS, respectively.

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