PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A REENGINEERED DATA CENTER NETWORK USING A LINK STATE PROTOCOL IMPLEMENTATION

The operational challenges of the contemporary data center network (DCN) has given rise to the need to change its IT service delivery to a modern data center network model that is more efficient, service-oriented, and responsive to business needs. A new dynamic infrastructure for such a modern data center network was modeled, which allows organizations to be better positioned to adopt integrated new technologies, such as consolidation, virtualization and cloud computing. This will help them to deliver dynamic access to IT services and resources thereby enabling IT departments to spend less time fixing IT problems and more time solving real business challenges. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) as a link state protocol in addressing network convergence and cost in the proposed data center network was evaluated in this work. OPNET simulator was used for modeling and parameter characterization.