Congestion Control Using OpenFlow in Software Defined Data Center Networks

this paper studies congestion control issue in data center networks and proposes a potential solution based on OpenFlow protocol. A main feature of the emerging data center networks is their performance in hosting different cloud applications and services. Since congestion management is necessary to effectively utilize numerous data center applications, in this paper we present an efficient method to control the congestion in the software defined data center networks based on OpenFlow protocol. In our proposed method, congestion in the network links is recognized by centrally checking the port statistics of the OpenFlow enabled switches and after that some of the flows in any congested link are rerouted through paths with more free resources by the OpenFlow controller. We executed our proposed method by Mininet, and the experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method in decreasing the congestion and enhancing the performance of the network. Keywords— OpenFlow; data center; congestion control; fattree; software-defined network.