Routing algorithms emulation on software-defined networking architecture

Abstract

Software-Defined Networking paradigm has becoming one of the most studied network concept thanks to its main characteristics: open and programmable. SDN suggests a centralized approach of the network intelligence decoupling the packet forwarding process (Data Plane) from the routing process (Control Plane) in the network devices. Hence the switches only have packet forwarding capability and cannot make any routing decisions, while decision making is done by the controller. OpenFlow is the most popular protocol used to help the switches and the controller to communicate. So, the controller can instruct the forwarding devices through a flow table logic that differs from the traditional destination-based forwarding to a more efficient generalizedbased forwarding. This paper want to present an example of software application that runs on the controller and instructs the network to find the shortest path between each node. An implementation of Dijkstra and Bellman-Ford algorithms on a Ryu SDN controller is presented and a comparison between these two approaches is provided.