A Research Review of OpenFlow for Datacenter Networking

OpenFlow is a network device management and monitoring protocol, as well as a switch specification, that has enabled research, experimentation and deployment of software-defined networks in general, and data center networks in particular. In this review, after describing the particularities of data center networks and OpenFlow technology, a collection of recent research papers integrating both topics is analyzed. The collection of proposals made by the authors whose research is reviewed is very broad. Most focus on traffic engineering, load balancing, congestion reduction and related topics, with the goal of optimizing data transfer by using all available resources. Other works focus on issues related to the multi-tenancy nature of these large networks, monitoring them, improving their security or modifying switch architecture specifically for data center networks. Overall, we have a panoramic view of the issues related to data center networking and the flexibility OpenFlow provides to help solve them.