An SDN-Based Multipath GridFTP for High-Speed Data Transfer

We demonstrate high-speed data transfer GridFTP using a multipath control mechanism with SDN (Software-Defined Networking). GridFTP is a typical tool that has been developed and widely used for bulk data transfer over a wide area network in the field. GridFTP supports a parallel high-speed data transfer scheme using multiple TCP streams. However, one of the shortest paths is used solely for data transfer in the default IP routing while there are multiple network paths (multipath) exist between widely-distributed sites. In this study, we propose a system that distributes the parallel TCP streams of GridFTP into multiple network paths by a traffic engineering technique brought by SDN. Our proposed system has achieved approximately 20% better performance than the conventional method in the best case in a global-scale real enviroment.