Implementing Resource-Aware Multicast Forwarding in Software Defined Networks

Abstract

Using multicast data transmissions, data can be efficiently distributed to a high number of network users. However, in order to efficiently stream multimedia using multicast communication, multicast routing protocols must have knowledge of all network links and their available bandwidth. In Software Defined Networks (SDN), all this information is available in a centralized entity-SDN network. This work proposes to utilize the SDN paradigm to perform network-resources aware multicast data routing in the SDN controller. In a prototype implementation, multicast data is routed using a modified Edmonds-Karp algorithm, by taking into account network topology and links load information. This paper presents the algorithm, implementation details, and an analysis of the testing results.