Extending Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm for software defined networking

Abstract

This paper extends the well-known Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm to consider not only the edge weights but also the node weights for a graph derived from the underlying SDN topology. We use Pyretic to implement the extended Dijkstra's algorithm and compare it with the original Dijkstra's algorithm and the unit-weighted Dijkstra's algorithm under the Abilene network topology in terms of end-to-end latency with the Mininet tool. As shown by the comparisons, the extended Dijkstra's algorithm outperforms the other algorithms.