Bachelor-/Masterarbeiten in Bereich Special-Purpose Routing Protocols

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    Background
    Currently, the IT industry is moving towards software-defined environments - the infrastructure is managed by software entities that react to current operating conditions in realtime. Part of this trend is adoption of Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) - a paradigm for network design where the control plane is separated from network devices and is implemented as a (logically) centralized controller. The controller is a software entity that runs on a general purpose computer. SDN is already being adopted in data-centers and there are currently several research projects aiming at adopting SDN for carrier networks including emerging 5G mobile networks.

    At ITM we are working on self-organizing SDNs -- networks where initial deployment and maintenance of SDN infrastructure is performed automatically. In this area we currently have following open theses.

     

    Problem Statement

    In SDN, each switch maintains a transport layer connection with one or several controllers. In the majority of current SDN deployments these connections run over a dedicated management network (separate cables). As this has several drawbacks, we consider SDNs with \emph{in-band control}, where the switch-controller connections use the same network as normal traffic. In this case switches and controllers may be separated by several hops and a routing protocol is required to calculate paths and enable connectivity.

    The goal of the thesis is to develop a routing algorithm and to implement and evaluate it in a simulator. The algorithm must be optimized for routing between a large number of senders and a small number of receivers. It must be multipath and it must support migration of controllers (think of VM migration) from one node to another. The simulator is implemented in C++ for OmNET++ simulation library.

     

    Prior knowledge of C++ is helpful, but not required. The thesis (Ausarbeitung) can be written in either English or German.