An OpenFlow-Based Dynamic Path Adjustment Algorithm for Multicast Spanning Trees

Multicast transmission can effectively reduce the cost of network resources in delivering packets to a group of receivers. However, it is difficult to adjust the path of the generated multicast spanning tree (MST) if the multicast source and group members are unchanged. OpenFlow has been a key technology to realize the software defined networking and makes the flow control feasible. This paper presents an OpenFlow-based solution to dynamically adjust the path of MST by configuring the paths according to the requirements of the network loads and specific conditions. In addition, we propose a distributed MST strategy to satisfy the requirements of inter-domain multicast transmissions. Experimental results show that the proposed solution can effectively adjust the paths of MST and facilitate the generation of MST by parallel computation in the construction of distributed MST.