Scalable Network Configuration with Consistent Updates in Software Defined Networks

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device coupled to a network, causes the computing device to:

• receive, from a network control application, a request to establish a network configuration corresponding to a data flow between the source device and the destination device, wherein the request comprises a fine grained header field tuple for defining the data flow;
• allocate, from a shadow address pool, a shadow address to be mapped to the fine grained header field tuple, wherein the shadow address pool comprises addresses not being used by devices coupled to the network;
• and
• configure a network infrastructure of the network to route data packets of the data flow from the source device to the destination device based on the shadow address.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• a memory coupled to the processor, and
• a network interface that couples the apparatus to a network, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
• receive, from a network control application, a request to establish a network configuration corresponding to a data flow between the source device and the destination device, wherein the request comprises a fine grained header field tuple for defining the data flow;
• allocate, from a shadow address pool, a shadow address to be mapped to the fine grained header field tuple, wherein the shadow address pool comprises addresses not being used by devices coupled to the network;
• and
• configure a network infrastructure of the network to route data packets of the data flow from the source device to the destination device based on the shadow address.