Software defined distributed cable networks: design and use cases
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Date
2023-01-25
Authors
Naithani, Sudhanshu
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
Cable networks have continuously evolved to enable new services and improve infrastructure capabilities. Cable networks have recently witnessed a shift from a centralized architecture to a distributed one to remain competitive by supporting higher data rates. This shift complicates the management and configuration of distributed network nodes in Distributed Access Architecture (DAA). Hence, the development of new solutions to overcome this challenge evolves as a crucial need for the success and economic deployment of DAA. In the meantime, Software Defined Networking (SDN) technology evolved as a novel networking paradigm that facilitates designing dynamic, cost-effective, agile, centrally manageable, and programmable network architectures. SDN segregates the data layer and control layer to enable the deployment of centrally optimized operation of distributed network nodes. This thesis focuses on developing a prototype for SDN-enabled DAA Cable Networks. Specifically, an SDN agent was integrated with a legacy DAA remote node to facilitate its communication with any SDN controller. Such integration enables network applications deployed on top of the SDN controller to define the forwarding behavior of these remote nodes. To illustrate this, two use cases, namely Load Balancing and Failure Management, were deployed in the Ryu controller. We validated the operation of these applications using a hybrid setup that includes one physical/industrial remote DAA node with the rest of the network emulated using the Mininet emulator. Additionally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed load balancing and compare it to the no-load balancing case using the web and video traffic. It’s clearly shown that load balancing shows up to 6.4% of a performance improvement for video bitrate without significantly impacting the web traffic.
The developed prototype could act as a precursor for designing and deploying
different use cases and the widespread adoption of SDN-based DAA networks.
Description
Keywords
Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) , SDN (Software-Defined Networking) , RMD (Remote Mac-Phy Device) , Mininet , Cable networks , Load-balancing , Failure management
Citation
Naithani, S. 2023. Software defined distributed cable networks: design and use cases. MSc Thesis, University College Cork.