A Framework for Application-aware Networking by Delegating Traffic Management of SDNs

Presence of a logically centralized controller in software-defined networks enables smart and fine-grained management of network traffic. Generally, traffic management includes measurement, analysis and control of traffic in order to improve resource utilization. This is done by inspecting corresponding performance requirements using metrics such as packet delay, jitter, loss rate and bandwidth utilization from global network view. There has been many works regarding traffic management of software-defined networks and how it could help to efficiently allocate resources. However, the vast majority of these solutions are bounded to indirect information retrieved within the border of ingress and egress switches. This means that the three stage loop of measurement, analysis and control is performed on switches in between this border while the traffic flowing in network originates from applications on end hosts. In this work, we present a framework for incorporating network applications into the task of traffic management using the concept of software-defined networking. We demonstrate how this could help applications to receive desired level of quality of service by implementing a prototype of an API for flow bandwidth reservation using OpenFlow and OVSDB protocols.