Software Defined Passive Optical Intra-Rack Networks in Data Centers

This paper presents a software defined passive optical intra-rack network SD-POIRN based on optical couplers in data centers. It proposes a software defined medium access control mechanism SD-MAC to schedule the intra-rack data transmissions. The SD-MAC utilizes the Max-Min Fair Share bandwidth allocation algorithm. We perform network evaluations in terms of network cost, power consumption and performance. Results show that the SD-POIRN architecture can largely reduce the network cost and power consumption compared with the traditional electrical top of rack switch solution. The SD-MAC mechanism improves the network throughput and end-to-end packet delay performance.