Extending OpenFlow with industrial grade communication services
Luís Filipe Santos Silva, Pedro Gonçalves, Ricardo Marau, Paulo Pedreiras · 2017
Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging and disruptive networking paradigm that emerged on campus networks but was soon recognized as having potential applicability in several other application areas, including Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT. Industrial IoT applications have requirements remarkably distinct from the ones of campus networks, particularly in what concerns timeliness and fault-tolerance. The METRICS project aims at developing an SDN framework enhanced with real-time services for industrial applications. This paper presents a set of extensions to the OpenFlow protocol that allows carrying out real-time reservations. Moreover, the paper also presents preliminary experimental results that illustrate basic datapath functionality of the switch that is being developed in the scope of the project.