JumpFlow: Reducing flow table usage in software-defined networks

The forwarding scheme in Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is usually coupled with flow table management. To reduce the redundancy in the flow tables of OpenFlow switches, some recent studies propose forwarding flows using stacked MPLS labels, in which each label in the stack indicates the forwarding decision at one hop of the forwarding route. However, using multiple MPLS labels in each packet introduces significant transmission overhead, especially in networks with large diameters.