Abstract: In order to solve the problems of low bandwidth utilization and poor network performance in data center networks,this paper proposed a multi-path traffic scheduling algorithm considering multiple factors(MSF) based on SDN.The algorithm utilizes the characteristics of control and forwarding separation in Software Defined Network(SDN) architecture and the centralized control of the controller to calculate the route for the data stream.Firstly,this algorithm calculates all the path sets with the shortest hops from all feasible paths between source host and destination host,then finds out the paths with the least criticality in the shortest path sets,and finally seeks out the lowest-cost path as the down-forwarding path in final flow table.Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the network bandwidth utilization and throughput,and reduces the average round-trip time of traffic compared with the ECMP algorithm and Hedera algorithm under different traffic models,thus improving the overall network performance of data center.

Key words: Data center network, SDN, Traffic scheduling