SDN Traffic Engineering using Segment Routing and DNS

NRENs in developing regions such as Africa experience various performance issues due to inadequate infrastructure and resources. Software defined networks (SDN) and segment routing (SR) are proposed in this research as possible solutions to the network performance issues that are currently faced by African NRENs. The SDN system will make use of a DNS resolver coupled with a controller to improve efficiency by alleviating the overhead of creating the network path. SANReN is the nation-wide NREN currently in place in South Africa, connecting universities, science institutions, and overseeing science projects such as the Square Kilometer Array. The proposed solution given in detail in this paper will be evaluated against a scaled down version of SANReN. We explain the proposed SRN system, how it will be evaluated, and how it will be used to find out how much we can improve end-toend performance in SANReN using SDN, SR, and a DNS resolver.