An SDN framework for seamless mobility in enterprise WLANs

With the proliferation of mobile devices, ubiquitous connectivity is becoming more and more desirable. Enterprise Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies provide such connectivity in several environments. In such deployments, configuration and management is done centrally using the vendor independent Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) protocol. However, the controllers provide little to no room for network programmability. In this paper, we propose a Software Defined Networking (SDN) framework for enterprise WLANs. This framework will provide network programmability allowing the network administrators to deploy customized applications for utilizing the WLANs. We also propose a seamless, client-unaware mobility mechanism which runs on the proposed framework.