We propose a novel framework that reduces the management and integration overheads for real-time network flows by leveraging the capabilities (especially global visibility and management) of software-defined networking (SDN) architectures. Given the specifications of flows that must meet hard real-time requirements, our framework synthesizes paths through the network and associated switch configurations -to guarantee that these flows meet their end-to-end timing requirements. In doing so, our framework makes SDN architectures "delay-aware" -remember that SDN is otherwise not able to reason about delays. Hence, it is easier to use such architectures in safetycritical and other latency-sensitive applications. We demonstrate our principles as well as the feasibility of our approach using both -exhaustive simulations as well as experiments using real hardware switches.

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