RTHM: Real-Time Hard Timeout Management for Reliable QoS in Industry 4.0 Networks

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a groundbreaking advancement in networking technology that provides a centralized software-managed system to control the network flow through controllers. The controller in SDN manages the installation of flow entries for specific flows in the switches' flow tables. SDN manages different routing procedures and functionalities to ensure efficient packet flow within a network. Additionally, removing packet flow entries from the switches becomes essential due to its limited memory capacity. However, the static hard timeout value removes flow entries periodically, leading to inefficiencies because it will require sending the packet to the controller to reinstall the flow due to missed entry, causing delay. To address this issue, the work proposes an algorithm that dynamically adjusts the hard timeout value in real-time. This approach minimizes table misses and improves Quality of Service (QoS) in industrial systems.