A Virtual QoS-Adaptive Network Connectivity Service: an SDN Approach

In this paper we propose the design and implementation of a software-defined networking (SDN)-based quality of service (QoS)-adaptive connectivity service for realtime network communication. The main contribution in this work lies in utilizing the network virtualization function of SDN to "elastically" provide network connectivity solutions that suit and adapt to the QoS requirements of different network services. This provides a better performance and communication response for performance-critical/emergency service deployments. The proposed algorithm utilizes priority grouping of open flow switches and periodically checks the number of flows processed by the switch to reassign priority groups. The proposed algorithm (VQoS) is leveraged to minimize the network delay and round-trip times and to enhance network utilization. VQoS is tested via simulation using a Mininet test bed on top of the OpenVirtex SDN Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) architecture to demonstrate the functionality of the adaptive SDN network virtualization. Empirical results evidently show the advantages of VQoS in terms of network bandwidth and the round-trip response time compared to the traditional non-virtualized solutions.