Towards a Carrier Grade SDN Controller: Integrating OpenFlow With Telecom Services

摘要

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) essentially decouples the hardware from the software that controls it. Currently, some SDN abstractions are materialized by OpenFlow and several OpenFlow controllers, based on different programming paradigms and architectures, are available. Usually, these controllers are bundled with some sample applications that enables the construction of new ones by using their particular way. However, these applications focus on specific services being tightly coupled with the switch behavior. In this scenario, SDN community is working to build a SDN control layer that meets carrier grade requirements such as throughput, availability and scalability. This work proposes a new SDN controller architecture that is integrated with a carrier grade service level execution environment, based on Service Logic Execution Environment (SLEE) architecture, defined under the Java APIs for Integrated Networks (JAIN) initiative. The proposed approach extends SDN based services by integrating OpenFlow with several network resources and communication protocols providing a cross layer platform that can satisfy these telecom operators requirements.