Constraint-aware software-defined network for routing real-time multimedia

Abstract

Traditional Ethernet-based IP networks do not have the capability to provide the Quality of Service (QoS) required for professional real-time multimedia applications. This is because they operate on a best-effort network service model that does not provide service guarantee. Network operators and service providers require a novel network architecture to efficiently handle the increasing demands of this changing network domain. Software-Defined Networking has emerged as an effective network architecture that decouples the control plane and data plane, which makes it capable of handling the dynamic nature of future network functions and intelligent applications while reducing cost through simplified hardware, software, and management. This paper presents an SDN architecture for real-time low latency applications that offer adaptive path provisioning based on the calculated end-to-end delay, available bandwidth, and traditional shortest path first algorithm. The SDN architecture utilises the Ryu OpenFlow application programming interface (API) to perform real-time monitoring to collect network statistics and computes the appropriate paths by using this information. The experiment to ascertain the feasibility and evaluate the effectiveness of this approach is carried out in an emulated network environment using Mininet.