Availability Improvement of Layer 2 Seamless Networks Using OpenFlow

Abstract EN

The network robustness and reliability are strongly influenced by the implementation of redundancy and its ability ofreacting to changes.

In situations where packet loss or maximum latency requirements are critical, replication of resourcesand information may become the optimal technique.

To this end, the IEC 62439-3 Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP)provides seamless recovery in layer 2 networks by delegating the redundancy management to the end-nodes.

In thispaper, we present a combination of the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) approach and PRP topologies to establisha higher level of redundancy and thereby, through several active paths provisioned via the OpenFlow protocol, theglobal reliability is increased, as well as data flows are managed efficiently.

Hence, the experiments with multiplefailure scenarios, which have been run over the Mininet network emulator, show the improvement in the availability andresponsiveness over other traditional technologies based on a single active path.