Evaluating SDN based rack-to-rack multi-path switching for data-center networks

Software defined networking becomes more and more popular in the networking community, but is still missing its triumphal procession into existing networks. Especially data-centers could benefit from this evolutionary network paradigm and get rid of many legacy parts with are still blocking the evolution how their networks are working in general. In this paper we will present an approach, use-case and performance evaluation as well, for the integration of software defined networking applications in data-centers. This approach addresses a sub topic or more precisely a single software defined networking application for enhancing inter rack communication by involving the top-of-rack and aggregation switches in a common fat-tree network topology. The basic aim is to provide some sort of load distribution mechanism on the afore mentioned network layers by using a flow based load sharing procedure with layer two multi-path. The evaluation will show that this is increasing the throughput in a rack-to-rack data exchange scenario.