Fast network configuration in Software Defined Networking

Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides a framework to dynamically adjust and re-program the data plane with the use of flow rules. The realization of highly adaptive SDNs with the ability to respond to changing demands or recover after a network failure in a short period of time, hinges on efficient updates of flow rules. We model the time to deploy a set of flow rules by the update time at the bottleneck switch, and formulate the problem of selecting paths to minimize the deployment time under feasibility constraints as a mixed integer linear program (MILP). To reduce the computation time of determining flow rules, we propose efficient heuristics designed to approximate the minimum-deployment-time solution by relaxing the MILP or selecting the paths sequentially. Through extensive simulations we show that our algorithms outperform current, shortest path based solutions by reducing the total network configuration time up to 55% while having similar packet loss, in the considered scenarios. We also demonstrate that in a networked environment with a certain fraction of failed links, our algorithms are able to reduce the average time to reestablish disrupted flows by 40%

Software defined networking: meeting carrier grade requirements

Software Defined Networking is a networking paradigm which allows network operators to manage networking elements using software running on an external server. This is accomplished by a split in the architecture between the forwarding element and the control element. Two technologies which allow this split for packet networks are ForCES and Openflow. We present energy efficiency and resilience aspects of carrier grade networks which can be met by Openflow. We implement flow restoration and run extensive experiments in an emulated carrier grade network. We show that Openflow can restore traffic quite fast, but its dependency on a centralized controller means that it will be hard to achieve 50 ms restoration in large networks serving many flows. In order to achieve 50 ms recovery, protection will be required in carrier grade networks

Video over Software Defined Networking

poster abstractSupporting end-to-end quality of service (QoS) for video applications requires the network to select optimum path among multiple paths to improve application performance. Multiple network paths from source to destination may be available but due to current network high coupling design identifying alternate paths is difficult. Network architecture, like Integrated services (IntServ), install a single path from source to destination which may not be optimum path for the application. Furthermore, it is an arduous task for video application developers to request service from IntServ. This paper provides three contributions to research on providing end-to-end QoS for video applications. First, it presents video over software defined networking (VSDN) - an architecture that is capable of making optimum path selection utilizing a global network view. Second, it describes the VSDN protocol used by video application developers to request service from VSDN enabled networks. Third, it presents the results of implementing a prototype of VSDN and quantitatively evaluates its behavior. The results show that VSDN has a linear-message complexity

SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING CONTEXT DISSOCIATION

Context dissociation techniques are described herein for Software Defined Networking (SDN) applications. This prevents a poor user experience wherein the user is forced to look at a spinner until the operation is complete