OpenFlow based control for re-routing with differentiated flows in data center networks

Abstract

Data Center Networks need densely interconnected topologies to provide high bandwidth for various cloud computing services. It is required to fully utilize the bandwidth resource in such a network with varying traffic patterns. We propose a flow-based edge-to-edge rerouting scheme for the Data Center Networks which has the mix of large flows and short flows. We focus on rerouting the large flows to alternative paths in the event of congestion because small flows are short-lived and shifting them between paths will increase their latency and overhead. The proposed scheme has several important features: 1) It provides adaptive re-routing of flows to efficiently spread the load in accordance with the changing load conditions. 2) It ensures effective traffic redistribution upon link failures. We develop a prototype and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism on OpenFlow test bed.