Abstract: The present invention relates to communications methods, apparatus and systems for determining and using Software Defined Networking (SDN) communications link and path status information. An exemplary embodiment of a method of operating a Session Border Controller (SBC) in a software defined network (SDN) includes: determining application level metrics at a SBC for a data communications flow and transmitting the application level metrics to a SDN controller. An exemplary embodiment of a method of operating a software defined networking (SDN) controller in a software defined network includes the steps of receiving, at a receiver of the SDN controller via the software defined network, application level metrics corresponding to a data communications session flow; and determining, by the SDN controller, the status of a communications path between two Internet Protocol addresses based on the received application level metrics.

Abstract: Security of a switched network is improved by obfuscating source and destination address information in data traffic that is vulnerable to physical attack and capture. An entry switch is configured to replace address pairs in ingress data frames with arbitrarily assigned tags. An exit switch is configured to replace the assigned tags with corresponding address pairs. Security is further enhanced by applying one or more layers of encryption to payload data while in transit within the switched network. Switch configuration is periodically refreshed to limit exposure to any successful decryption attack. By obfuscating address pair information and distributing traffic across a plurality of wavelengths in dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) transmission systems, data frame affiliation is lost across wavelengths and decryption attacks on any captured data is highly confounded and limited to a small window of time between configuration refreshes.