Experimental demonstration of time-aware software defined networking for OpenFlow-based intra-datacenter optical interconnection networks

• We propose time-aware software defined networking (TaSDN) architecture for OpenFlow-based intra-datacenter optical networks.
• Time-aware service scheduling (TaSS) strategy is introduced to allocate the network and datacenter resources optimally.
• The feasibility of architecture is experimentally verified on our testbed with OpenFlow-enabled tunable optical modules.

Nowadays, most service providers offer their services and support their applications through federated sets of data centers which need to be interconnected using high-capacity optical networks in intra-datacenter networks. Many datacenter applications in the environment require lower delay and higher availability with the end-to-end guaranteed quality of service. In this paper, we propose a novel time-aware software defined networking (TaSDN) architecture for OpenFlow-based intra-datacenter optical interconnection networks. Based on the proposed architecture, a time-aware service scheduling (TaSS) strategy is introduced to allocate the network and datacenter resources optimally, which considers the datacenter service scheduling with flexible service time and service bandwidth according to the various time sensitivity requirements. The TaSDN can arrange and accommodate the applications with required QoS considering the time factor, and enhance the data center responsiveness to quickly provide for intra-datacenter service demands. The overall feasibility of the proposed architecture is experimentally verified on our testbed with real OpenFlow-enabled tunable optical modules. The performance of TaSS strategy under heavy traffic load scenario is also evaluated based on TaSDN architecture in terms of blocking probability and resource occupation rate.