Multi-path Routing for Mission Critical Applications in Software-Defined Networks

Mission critical applications depends on the communication among other systems and/or users and thus, the traffic/flows generated by these applications could bring profound consequences in sectors such as military, hospital, automotive safety and air-traffic control systems. These critical flows require stringent QoS requirements on parameters such as throughput, packet loss, latency, jitter and redundancy. Network operators must have tools that allow them to provide special treatment to such mission-critical flows based on specific application requirements. Due to the constraints of traditional networks, we should seek for solutions supported by de-centralised approaches offered by SDN. In this paper, we propose a solution to achieve the stringent QoS requirement of such mission critical flows in multi-path environments based on SDN. This solution allows the network operator to prioritise traffic between specific end points. Also, using the overall view of the network, the solution allows evaluation of the path loads between two endpoints and to opt for the less congested path. Moreover, this paper tries to demonstrate a satisfactory network performance by presenting trade-offs between throughput and the number of hops within a multi-path network. The proposed solution is implemented in the application and control layer of the OpenDaylight Controller. The networking devices were simulated using Mininet simulator and background traffic was generated using Iperf.