IMPROVING EFFICIENCY AND FAULT TOLERANCE IN A SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORK USING PARALLEL REDUNDANCY PROTOCOL

This disclosure pertains to systems and methods to improve fault tolerance and hardware utilization in a software defined network (SDN) that includes hosts communicating with parallel redundancy protocol (PRP). In one embodiment, a network comprising a plurality of switches and interconnected using a plurality of physical links may connect a first communication host, a second communication host, and an SDN controller. The SDN controller may include a PRP optimization subsystem to identify parallel communication paths between the first communication host and the second communication host that utilize distinct physical communication links. The SDN controller may also include a traffic routing subsystem to create a plurality of communication flows between the first communication host and the second communication host utilizing the distinct physical communication links.