OpenFlow-based adaptive adjustment of optical path resources in dynamic optical networks

The development of broadband services gives the existing networks a tremendous pressure. It forces us to think about what measures to take, in addition to increasing the capacity, to improve the service capabilities of the networks and reduce the costs. The virtual programmable features of OpenFlow bring a lot of flexibility and convenience to the operation of networks. For the purpose of applying the programmable feature of software to future optical networks, this paper proposes a novel OpenFlow-based adaptive adjustment scheme for optical path resources. In addition, to control the underlying devices, the current standard OpenFlow protocol is extended, and four new message types are developed to communicate between OpenFlow controller and OpenFlow virtual switch (OVS). An experiment of OpenFlow-based adaptive spectrum adjustment is carried out on the experimental test-bed that we proposed to verify the feasibility of the above scheme. The experimental results demonstrate that the software control on optical connections is an effective solution to the adaptive adjustment of optical path resources in dynamic optical networks.