Flexible multi-path routing for global optimization in software-defined datacenters

Existing traffic engineering strategies can achieve locally optimized network capability by uniformly leading flows to candidate paths. From a global network view, software defined network (SDN) allows a central controller to steer traffic effectively, and to improve network performance significantly, both for backbone and data center networks (DCNs). However, rational using of limited or expensive resources is very important in SDN, e.g., ternary content addressable memory (TCAM). In this paper, we focus on satisfying global network objectives such as delay and packet loss, with a comprehensive consideration of other criteria (network throughput and forwarding table size). We present a flexible multi-path routing scheme and formulate this as a mixed integer linear programming. It's turned out by simulation results and analysis that the delay and packet loss performance using proposed global algorithm outperforms other existing algorithms.