A scalable SDN in-band control protocol for IoT networks in 6G environments

The proliferation of intelligent Machine-to-Machine (M2M) environments provided by the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to an increase in concurrent communications, thereby generating new demands in terms of capacity, performance, latency, and network efficiency that must be addressed. While it is true that the fifth generation of mobile technologies (5G) is already in place, addressing some of the mentioned needs, the upcoming the sixth generation of mobile technologies (6G) communication network is positioned as a technology to address future requirements, with a particular emphasis in the field of IoT. 6G harnesses the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology as a pivotal component of its architecture due to the flexibility and programmability it offers to enhance performance and optimize the network’s backbone. However, the SDN paradigm has drawbacks in IoT environments, such as the connectivity scheme between each network node and the SDN controller. This paper introduces the implementation of a scalable SDN in-band control protocol, which leverages the data network for control information transmission, particularly suitable for IoT networks. This implementation has been designed and implemented for both wired and wireless networks, utilizing the Basic OpenFlow User-space Software Switch (BOFUSS).