Forwarding Path Discovery with Software Defined Networking

Abstract

Without STP and LLDP, we propose a new approach to find faster paths between the source and the destination and fully utilize the links between switches under the Software Defined Network paradigm. To find round-trip path with lighter load, we design a mechanism to compose special ARP packets for exploring the routing path and avoid broadcast storm by dropping late or duplicate packets. Meanwhile, the controller can carefully regulate other packets without affecting the behavior of the special packets. The evaluation results with the Clos-like network topology show that our approach can be used to improve the performance of transmission throughput. We believe our method is very suitable, especially, for a dynamic network environment, where links are up and down frequently. Our implementation can be seen as an instance showing the flexibility of SDN.