Prototype for customized multicast services in software defined networks

Multicast, transmitting packets from one source to a group of destinations, is a popular service in Internet and now in the datacenter network. However, a unified multicast algorithm cannot satisfy the diverse performance requirements from different users. Hence customized multicast services are proposed in software defined networks (SDN) in this paper. We tackle a few associated technical challenges, and introduce a prototype with OpenFlow1.3 and RYU controller. Our contributions are: (1) we present the modules in detail and explain why they are demanded to implement multicast services in SDN, independent of current Internet-based IGMP protocols and the multicast address; (2) our prototype could sliced multicast trees in the substrate network in accordance to different embedded multicast algorithms; (3) the last hop translation is proposed in access switches to guarantee the multicast flow to be forwarded through the calculated multicast tree and be consumed in end points. Simulation experiments evaluate these performances. And two applications (namely, multicast text transfer service and streaming media application) further validate the feasibility and operability of our customized prototype for multicast services in the real world.