SDN-based Network Architecture to Develop the Smart University

Smart studies make the universe connect to digital environments, while smart universities are introduced as the places where new applications create services and facilitate operational efficiency. Motivated by the interest in smart studies, we point out smart universities that consider technology-based teaching methods in real-time. To address the current limitations in this field, we introduce a network architecture using software-defined network technology with deployment in the smart university networks. x-Folded TM as one of the latest topologies with enhanced applicability is applied in this study to address more flexibility and improvement for smart networks. We also indicate remarkable challenges that must be considered before designing a network architecture to achieve improved results. Through the design of a new architecture, the proposed one inherits the strength of both folded and software-defined network architectures. To evaluate the performance of the contribution, we simulate and assess it based on different performance metrics. The result shows the efficiency of the new architecture at the end. However, there are still some limitations in the proposed architecture, such as the efficient distribution of edge nodes and applied caching technique at the edge nodes, which have been suggested as the future work.