Integrating OpenFlow in IMS Networks and Enabling for Future Internet Researchand Experimentation

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is an architectural framework for delivering IP multimedia services. The appearance of Software Defined Networks (SDNs) concept in the IMS fabric can unleash the potential of the IMS technology which enables access agnostic services including applications like video-conferencing, multi-player gaming, white boarding all using an all-IP backbone. SDN requires some method for the control plane to communicate with the data plane. One such mechanism is OpenFlow which is a standard interface for controlling computer networking switches. This work presents our experience and implementation efforts in integrating OpenFlow mechanisms within IMS. Since this work also is done within the Future Internet Research and Experimentation domain, we also describe how we enabled our infrastructures with experimentation mechanisms.