As networks continue to expand and diversify, managing the growing number of active network devices has become increasingly complex. Software-defined networking (SDN) offers a flexible solution for network management, yet significant challenges remain, especially in optimizing network expansion, traffic distribution, security, latency, and energy consumption. This thesis focuses on energy consumption reduction and latency reduction of control packets within SDN architectures. We propose the IED-SDN algorithm, which targets two main objectives: energy consumption reduction and control packet latency improvement. Our approach consists of three phases. First, we optimize node structure, followed by link optimization through strategic alignment and removal of inefficiencies, aiming to enhance network performance and overall sustainability. In the final phase, we analyze the number of controllers required for different topologies to minimize latency, thereby fostering a resilient, and high-performance network ecosystem. The proposed IED-SDN algorithm is evaluated on three network topologies Abilene, Aarnet and Xpedius showing significant improvements in both energy consumption and latency reduction. In addition, the performance comparison with two other topologies, Geant and Bics, reveals that IED-SDN outperforms GA-LSO and MCPAP WFR algorithms, further confirming its effectiveness.
