Multimedia optimized routing in OpenFlow networks

Networks are experiencing a paradigm shift from textual data to high data rate traffic, especially carrying streaming media. Traditional network architectures can generally not keep up with this change. Software Defined Network architectures try to enable network engineers to more easily develop new transmission architectures. Current approaches of media transport, e.g. as defined by RTSP/RTP, are purely end-to-end oriented and do not consider the architecture of the underlying network. In this work we propose ways of analyzing the network state and intercepting RTSP/RTP streaming packets in Software Defined Networks with the OpenFlow 1.0 protocol. This information is used for an adept routing decision. Finally, we share our view on sample experimental scenarios where we demonstrate the benefits of the proposed transmission architecture.