Network operators are faced with the challenge of deploying and managing middleboxes (also called inline services) such as firewalls within their broadband access, datacenter or enterprise networks. Due to the lack of available protocols to route traffic through middleboxes, operators still rely on error-prone and complex low-level configurations to coerce traffic through the desired set of middleboxes. Built upon the recent software-defined networking (SDN) architecture and OpenFlow protocol, this paper proposes StEERING, short for SDN inlinE sERvices and forwardlNG. It is a scalable framework for dynamically routing traffic through any sequence of middleboxes. With simple centralized configuration, StEERING can explicitly steer different types of flows through the desired set of middleboxes, scaling at the level of per-subscriber and per-application policies. With its capability to support flexible routing, we further propose an algorithm to select the best locations for placing services, such that the performance is optimized. Overall, StEERING allows network operators to monetize their middlebox deployment in new ways by allowing subscribers flexibly to select available network services.

This paper discusses the benefits of applying software defined networking (SDN) to circuit based transport networks. It first establishes the need for SDN in the context of transport networks. This paper argues that the use of SDN in the transport layers could be the enabler for both packet-optical integration and improved transport network applications. Then, this paper proposes extensions to OpenFlow 1.1 to achieve control of switches in multi-technology transport layers. The approach presented in this paper is simple, yet it distinguishes itself from similar work by its friendliness with respect to the current transport layer control plane based on generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS). This is important as it will enable an easier and gradual injection of SDN into existing transport networks. This paper is completed with a few use case applications of SDN in transport networks.

This paper addresses the Multi-Layer (ML)/Multi-Region (MR) optimal path computation problem in Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching (GMPLS) networks. Within the context of traffic engineering, path computation consists of routing Label Switched Paths (LSPs) under a multitude of constraints while optimizing resource utilization. One such problem consists of finding a shortest path in a heterogeneous GMPLS network where the different link switching types and node switching adaptation capabilities present their own set of constraints. We argue that most work have overlooked these constraints perhaps due to an ambiguous interpretation of the switching adaptation functions defined by GMPLS. To this end, we propose a novel GMPLS path computation algorithm including a binary integer program (BIP) formulation which considers the complete set of ML/MR node adaptation constraints related to nesting, un-nesting and conversion.