A Europe-wide demonstration of fast network restoration with OpenFlow

Network protection is a key feature of communications systems to ensure minimal packet loss when failure occurs in the data path. Segment protection is typically used to reroute data around a failed link, using secondary backup paths. We propose a novel solution to this problem, proposing an Independent Transient Plane (ITP) design that reduces the complexity of the path configuration process and the usage of resources in the routing elements, compared to current solutions. This work complements our previous studies, by reporting the results of an international testbed implementation over a pan-European network, showing protection times below 20 ms.