Extension of OpenFlow protocol to support optical transport network, and its implementation

Abstract

By having the OpenFlow protocol support Optical Transport Networks (OTN) and work as the unified control interface for multilayer (L0-L4) networks, a simple and cost-effective multilayer Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller can be created. Our aim is to propose and standardize the extended OpenFlow protocol to support OTN in Open Networking Foundation (ONF). We describe the approved specification, and the process from proposal to standard. We applied this extension to our OpenFlow controller and OpenFlow agent and succeeded in demonstrating that the extension works as desired in single- and multi-vendor environments. Future directions for OpenFlow extension and modeling of multilayer integrated nodes are also discussed.