Traffic engineering in software defined networks: A survey

Abstract

An important technique to optimize a network and improve network robustness is traffic engineering. As traf- fic demand increases, traffic engineering can reduce service degradation and failure in the network. To allow a network to adapt to changes in the traffic pattern, the research com- munity proposed several traffic engineering techniques for the traditional networking architecture. However, the traditional network architecture is difficult to manage. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new networking model, which decou- ples the control plane and data plane of the networking de- vices. It promises to simplify network management, intro- duces network programmability, and provides a global view of network state. To exploit the potential of SDN, new traf- fic engineering methods are required. This paper surveys the state of the art in traffic engineering techniques with an em- phasis on traffic engineering for SDN. It focuses on some of the traffic engineering methods for the traditional network ar- chitecture and the lessons that can be learned from them for better traffic engineering methods for SDN-based networks. This paper also explores the research challenges and future directions for SDN traffic engineering solutions.