Resilient software defined networking for industrial control networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is currently a hot topic in the area of Datacenter Networking or Enterprise Networks as it has the promise to radically simplify network management and operation. However, it has not been considered so far as a promising candidate for Industrial Control Networks mainly because of the deterministic performance requirements and the dedicated design of those networks to fulfil strict performance guarantees. In this paper, we propose a resilient SDN based architecture for Industrial Control Networks and show that by combining several SDN based fast failover technologies using per-link Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD), preconfigured primary and backup paths and flexible packet duplication orchestrated by an SDN controller, we can reduce significantly the control latency and provide more stringent performance guarantees even under lossy and failing links.