A NEAT framework for enhanced end-host integration in SDN environments

SDN aims to facilitate the management of increasingly complex, dynamic network environments and optimize the use of the resources available therein with minimal operator intervention. To this end, SDN controllers maintain a global view of the network topology and its state. However, the extraction of information about network flows and other network metrics remains a non-trivial challenge. Network applications exhibit a wide range of properties, posing diverse, often conflicting, demands towards the network. As these requirements are typically not known, controllers must rely on error-prone heuristics to extract them. In this work, we develop a framework which allows applications deployed in an SDN environment to explicitly express their requirements to the network. Conversely, it allows network controllers to deploy policies on end-hosts and to supply applications with information about network paths, salient servers and other relevant metrics. The proposed approach opens the door for fine grained, application-aware resource optimization strategies in SDNs.