Energy-Efficient Routing in SDN-Based Access Networks

Abstract

Forecast studies indicate a dramatic growth of Internet traffic due to streaming media services such as IPTV and Video-on-Demand (VoD). For these services, the bandwidth offered by the network is of paramount importance. At the same time, network energy consumption becomes a parameter that should be considered while designing new network architectures or new network mechanisms. For instance, in 5G networks, energy efficiency is considered as one of the key performance indicators. Therefore, in future access networks, one of the main challenges is reducing the power consumption in networks, while preserving the quality of service (QoS) perceived by the end user. A new energy-efficient routing algorithm is suggested, called GoGreen routing. This algorithm computes and selects, for each user traffic, the routing path that ensures less power consumption in the network and, at the same time, offers the adequate bandwidth. It uses a k-shortest path algorithm and considers two metrics, namely link power consumption and available bandwidth metrics. As the SDN controller is designed to have a global view of network topology including network interfaces properties of each node in the network, we suggest to implement the GoGreen routing as a module in the SDN controller.