Enhancing openflow with Media Independent Management capabilities

The evergrowing availability of access technologies, on-line services and connected devices has been motivating the development of novel networking solutions, fostering new deployments of cloud computing, Network Function Virtualization and even mobile accesses. One of the core aspects supporting these innovative solutions is the Software Defined Networking (SDN) concept, which brings added configuration and management capabilities to the network fabric, aiding the support and introduction of new technologies and protocols. However, the base operations of SDN do not consider link conditions when employing their controlling mechanisms and mostly target fixed core links. These link conditions are important to optimizations involving wireless access links, which are paramount in today´s plethora of wireless and mobile accesses. This paper enhances SDN mechanisms with Media Independent Management capabilities, deployable in both wired and wireless environments, optimizing link connectivity establishment and offering new perspectives to network developers for building new capabilities in the networks. The resulting framework was implemented over open-source software in a physical testbed, with results showing the benefits that this solution brings in terms of path optimization, featuring different monitoring schemes and allowing energy efficient scenarios.