Failure recovery using segment protection in software defined networks

Abstract

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a network architecture that decouples the control and data planes. SDN enables network control to make its programmable directly. Software defined networking is the OpenFlow protocol and its architecture is designed for Local Area Networks (LAN). It does not include effective mechanisms for fast resiliency. Fast resiliency is a major requirement in metro and carrier-grade Ethernet network. The proposed scheme aims to reduce the recovery time during single link network failures. The controller calculates the backup path proactively using segment protection scheme. The switches identify link failures in segments using Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) protocol and reroute the traffic. As the link is recovered the switches will start using the best path. The controller deletes the backup segment entries when the corresponding working path entries expire. This paper experiments the link protection scheme that aims to enhance the OpenFlow architecture by adding fast recovery mechanisms in the switch and the controller. This is achieved by enabling the controller to add backup paths proactively along with the working paths and enabling the switches to perform the recovery actions locally. Recovery time is less compared to the switch-controller and round trip time which provides better results. The system performance is evaluated by finding the packet loss and switch over time by comparing it with the current OpenFlow implementations. The system performs reasonably better than the existing ones in terms of switch over time.