Optimization of the OpenFlow controller in wireless environments for enhancing mobility

Abstract

OpenRoads or OpenFlow Wireless is an open-source platform for deploying an innovative and realistic strategy for different services in wireless networks. It provides a wireless extension for OpenFlow. It is developed to support existing Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) networks. It can provide several mobility managers and run them concurrently in the network including hard handover, informed handover, n-casting and Hoolock. However, the provided mobility support for flow-based routing, where flows of one source taking different paths through multiple wireless access points or base stations, is not simple and hard to be deployed in the traditional routing algorithms. This paper proposes an intelligent mobility enhancement control and then develops an algorithm to decide which neighbor switches need to be selected for the installation of new flow entries and to allocate the appropriate idle-timeout for the selected switches. The proposed approach provides a simple solution to solve the user mobility problem in wireless OpenFlow environments which can handle the fast migration of user addresses (e.g. IP addresses) between several wireless access points and base stations. This approach leads to improvement in the end users' experience. © 2013 IEEE.