• Constrained routing
• Load Balancing
• OpenFlow
• Software-Defined Networking

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a new networking paradigm that subverts the architecture of traditional networks, using data plane and control plane separation to achieve centralized control and programmability of the network.

In this thesis, by means of an SDN-based approach, we design, develop and test a control
application to achieve network load balancing and routing with security constraints. For load balancing function, we propose a new policy for routing traffic flows according to links utilization, which takes advantage of traffic statistics provided by OpenFlow. For security routing function, we enable the control application with the capability of taking different countermeasures, such as traffic flows re-routing or blocking, when different attacks are detected.

The thesis includes relevant background knowledge, a description of several tools for designing and implementing this network control application, details about the implementation, and experimental validation of the developed functionalities .