Minimum cost multi-path parallel transmission with delay constraint by extending openflow

Sometimes user has the requirement to run a high bandwidth application over a low bandwidth network. But its implementation is not easy as the traditional network transmits data with only one path where its bandwidth is lower than the demand. Although the current network technology like SDN has the ability to precisely control the data transmission in the network, but till now the standard open-flow protocol does not support splitting one flow to multiple flows. In this paper, a flow splitting algorithm is proposed. The algorithm splits a data flow to multiple sub-flows by extending the openflow protocol. A multiple paths routing algorithm is also proposed to implement the multi-path parallel transmission in the paper. The algorithm selects multiple paths and minimizes the cost of transmission under the constraint of maximum delay and delay variance. The simulations show the algorithms can significantly improve the transmission performance.