SDN offers a wide range of opportunities for creating applications with custom logic previously unavailable in traditional networks.
Research directions in this area are as follows:

• Development of fault-tolerant algorithms for connecting switches to controller using InBand.
  OpenFlow proposes two ways to connect a switch to a controller: OutOfBand and InBand. The first one uses an auxiliary network for control traffic, while the second one uses only the managed network itself. No need for additional network makes InBand connection preferred in the most cases. However, supporting transferring control traffic along with user traffic is hard. It’s hard mostly as control traffic should have maximum priority and it’s routes should be rebuilt on-the-go in case of network failures.
• Development of a load balancing algorithm for OpenFlow switches.
  OpenFlow switch is well suited for granular load balancing. Complicated balancing algorithms are running on SDN controller.
• Development of PCEP support for a SDN controller.
  OpenFlow is the most popular control protocol for SDN, but not the only one. PCEP is common in transport networks, what makes iimportant t’s support in SDN controllers.
• Development of Netconf support for a SDN controller.
  OpenFlow is the most popular control protocol for SDN, but not the only one. Netconf is a modern protocol for remote configuration, used in traditional networks. Supporting Netconf in a SDN controller enlarges a set of switches it can operate with.

Publications
Chandelle: Smooth and Fast WiFi Roaming with SDN/OpenFlow
EasyWay: Simplifying and automating enterprise network management with SDN/OpenFlow