PDMR: Priority-based dynamic multi-path routing algorithm for a software defined network

Abstract

The ever changing traffic and Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of different traffic classes in multimedia applications impose tremendous challenges to the routing algorithm design. To address these challenges, a novel priority-based dynamic multi-path routing algorithm (PDMR) over Software Defined Network (SDN) is proposed in this paper. PDMR comprehensively considers the priorities of multimedia streams and the real-time status of the link. The goal of PDMR is to determine what resources to be allocated to a set of flows keeping their priority, improving the utilization of network resources for satisfying stringent QoS requirements of the traffic flow. According to different QoS requirements in multimedia applications, traffic is classified into two classes and allocated their respective priorities. In addition, we derive a classification of the link cost function by considering the real-time parameters such as link bandwidth, link delay, and link load to allocate the resources flexibly for transmission and to reduce the influence of between traffic classes. Furthermore, our proposed communication model between application services and the controller, which can guarantee the reliable transmission of the designated traffic. By conducting extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our proposed PDMR algorithm significantly outperforms other existing non-priority-based schemes in improving network performance.