Research Of Multicast Mechanism In OpenFlow Network

With the enrichment of the business and the swelling of network scale, the network structure is becoming more and more complex. The network architecture almost has no breakthrough, but all kinds of patch protocols become more than before. This patch solution is difficult to meet the demand of more complex network. Therefore, it is imperative to redefine the network architecture. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging network architecture whose core idea is that network control is decoupled from forwarding, using the controller for centralized management. The characteristics of the SDN enable it possess a strong programmability. SDN will become one important trend of the future network development.In the process of transition from traditional network to SDN, the coexistence of them will occur inevitably. The research setting of the paper is internal network which is OpenFlow network while external network is traditional network. But SDN does not support the traditional network protocol. Multicast technology in traditional network can solve the problem of single point to send and multi point to receive effectively, so as to realize the data transmission effectively. It’s a widely used technology. The aim of this paper is that you can implement forwarding of multicast flow in OpenFlow network and provide certain granularity of the multicast service quality without changing the traditional multicast protocol.The paper starts with a basic introduction of relevant background information and correlative technology. Referring to existing multicast management protocol and multicast routing protocols, multicast controller is put forward and designed. Multicast controller mainly solves three problems, which are multicast group member management, multicast forwarding tree generation and multicast service quality. The paper gives a detailed description of the idea about how to solve the problem, at the same time, multicast controller is designed and implemented. The final test results show that the multicast controller can realize multicast flows forward in OpenFlow network and provide certain granularity of service quality.