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Layer-2 Failure Recovery Methods in Critical Communication Networks

Authors:
Ferdinand von Tüllenburg
Thomas Pfeiffenberger

Keywords: Critical infrastructure; Fast failover evaluation; Software defined networking; Reliability; Network recovery

Abstract:
Service interruptions in critical infrastructures, like the power grid, can lead to serious consequences for safety and security of people. To avoid such interruptions of distributed applications or process control systems belonging to a critical infrastructure, reliable recovery mechanisms for the associated communication systems are essential. OpenFlow, a standard for software defined networking (SDN), provides the fast failover group mechanism to forward packets via alternative paths in case of link failures. In contrast to the conceptual and theoretical discussions of this concept, in this work, the performance of path restoration using SDN fast-failover groups is compared to the performance of path computation when using the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP). Our results show, that current implementations of OpenFlow can significantly improve the failover performance compared to RSTP, which makes it possible to use SDN in ultra high reliability communication networks. But it is also shown that there is a potential to further improve the SDN recovery mechanisms by deeply inspecting the correlations between OpenFlow/SDN implementations, the used hardware and the operating system.

Pages: 66 to 71

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: June 26, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4006

ISBN: 978-1-61208-482-4

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from June 26, 2016 to June 30, 2016