Fault-Resilience for Bandwidth Management in Industrial Software-Defined Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we address a key challenge of managing required bandwidth for traffic flows in Industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPS). To manage the required bandwidth and to improve fault-resilience in such Industrial networks, software-defined networks (SDN) are used. We propose a contract-based framework with the use of SDN where the components are bound to bandwidth-contracts and a resilience manager. The bandwidth-contracts state the bandwidth requirements of the traffic flows. Based on the newly calculated routes, an observer detects whether the contract still satisfies the bandwidth requirements of the traffic flows or the contract gets violated (termed as fault). To provide resilience to such faults in the network, a resilience manager integrated with control logic, decides and executes a suitable response strategy (depending upon the severity of the fault). The proposed framework is evaluated using Ryu SDN controller on hardware testbed. Different tests on the hardware testbed depict that the proposed framework provides enhanced network resilience as compared to the base-line mechanisms. Besides, our extensive experimental emulations are carried out on the Mininet SDN tool for testing the scalability of the proposed framework.