Concepts for Reliable Communication in a Software-Defined Network Architecture

Abstract

Not available services or service interruption could have different impact to our social life. Emails or messages which are not delivered in a proper time-frame could lead to omit a meeting or a discussion with colleagues. Interconnected CPS in different domains, like autonomous driving, smart grids, Industry 4.0, needs a guaranteed and safe delivery of information.

Nowadays distributed application in critical infrastructures such as transportation (e.g. air traffic management, train control, traffic management), financial services, or electricity systems, are often implemented in dedicated network infrastructures not using the public Internet. This leads to high expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX) for the companies to maintain these separated and dedicated telecommunication infrastructure.

Our approach in this work is to verify concepts to share the Internet, as a telecommunication infrastructure for critical and non-critical applications. This reduces the effort to implement and to manage different communication architectures. The present work develops and evaluates methods and procedures that enable high reliable communication between two endpoints over several shared telecommunication networks for future critical and uncritical applications. Our approach shows that it is possible to use the public Internet for future communication requirements in a converged network. Further innovations include the integration of novel network technologies, such as software-defined networks (SDN), programming protocol independent packet processors (P4), and self-adaptive and autonomous network management functions.