Cost-Effective Router/Switch Control System Based On Software-Defined Networking Over World Wide Web

Software-defined networking (SDN), which enables networks to be controlled centrally and can change parameters flexibly such as their topology, settings for packet exchanging, and quality of service is one of the network virtualization technologies that have attracted significant attention recently. Besides, it has been widely used because it reduces network administrator's workloads of network management. However, SDN-enabled network devices are generally expensive, and the network construction cost is a significant factor when SDN is deployed in a network of enterprises and data centers. In this paper, from the viewpoint of the cost and network management workload, we propose a router/switch control system for Internet protocol over an optical network with database function over World Wide Web using cost-effective Internet of Things devices. We designed and constructed the proposed system. Besides, we conducted experiments using the remote control function in the proposed system, which can change the port status of network devices. The experiment results proved that the proposed system works correctly. Therefore, by using the proposed system, SDN-enabled network construction cost can be significantly reduced compared to replacing legacy network devices with SDN-enabled network devices. To be more precise, the cost of a single SDN-enabled network device can be reduced to the cost of a single Raspberry Pi as IoT device, and the total cost can be reduced in proportion to the scale of the network. Furthermore, we discuss future studies to be considered for further cost reduction.