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Dynamic Path Discovery for In-band Control Plane Communication in a Tactical SDN Network

Authors:
Anders Fongen

Keywords: software defined networks, tactical networks, adaptive forwarding, resilience

Abstract:
Software Defined Networking (SDN) offers promising improvements in operational control of tactical networks, in terms of traffic prioritization, topology management, infrastructure protection, resource monitoring, configuration and deployment. Military networks are characterized by relatively slow radio links which are vulnerable to detection and intrusion, so novel technologies like SDN are highly relevant and actively researched for these purposes. However, the SDN architectural blueprint needs several modifications to meet the typical requirements of a tactical mobile network. This paper addresses the need for reliable in-band control plane traffic across the southbound interface, and suggests two different algorithms to obtain adaptive forwarding decisions for southbound protocol traffic across the data plane links. Among the challenges related to the implementation of adaptive forwarding mechanisms in SDN equipment is the limited expressiveness in the OpenFlow language. Based on expiry mechanisms in flow rules, the SDN switches were able to choose alternative forwarding ports in case of link or switch failure in the grid. The conclusion of the study is that it is possible to make adaptive mechanisms with recovery times comparable to the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), but with better utilization of link resources since link loops are allowed to exist for load distribution (contrary to the STP protocol).

Pages: 9 to 15

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2019

Publication date: September 22, 2019

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2326-9383

ISBN: 978-1-61208-740-5

Location: Porto, Portugal

Dates: from September 22, 2019 to September 26, 2019