Field Trial of an OpenFlow-Based Unified Control Plane for Multilayer Multigranularity Optical Switching Networks

Software defined networking and OpenFlow, which allow operators to control the network using software running on a network operating system within an external controller, provide the maximum flexibility for the operator to control a network, and match the carrier's preferences given its centralized architecture, simplicity, and manageability. In this paper, we report a field trial of an OpenFlow-based unified control plane (UCP) for multilayer multigranularity optical switching networks, verifying its overall feasibility and efficiency, and quantitatively evaluating the latencies for end-to-end path creation and restoration. To the best of our knowledge, the field trial of an OpenFlow-based UCP for optical networks is a world first.