Load-Balanced Multipath Routing Through Software-Defined Networking

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides the flexibility to dynamically manage network paths, facilitating efficient traffic flow and mutipath routing, thereby improving network resiliency to congestion. This study investigates three distinct SDN-enabled routing strategies: shortest path routing, Equal-Cost Multi-Path (ECMP) routing, and bandwidth-based multipath routing. The comparative result analysis across these three routing strategies revealed that bandwidth-based routing consistently outperforms Shortest Path and ECMP routing across key performance metrics. The study found that Bandwidth-based routing maintains lower delay and jitter, indicating its superior ability to manage network traffic efficiently even as data flow increases. Furthermore, it demonstrates a more modest increase in packet loss, underscoring its effective congestion management. These findings suggest that Bandwidth-based routing provides a more reliable and efficient network performance, particularly in high-traffic conditions, making it a preferable solution for SDN implementations seeking to optimize data flow and network stability.