## 1 Introduction  
SDN decouples the control plane (networking logic) from the data plane (forwarding logic) [1]. The SDN controllers acted as a central network intelligent while the data plane is released from control function and focus on forwarding packets to the next hop. This way, the SDN controller maintained the global network knowledge and extract network information from the data plane at real time. Standard communication interface is used to separate the control plane from the data plane [2]. The early stage of SDN commences with some standard protocols which include Forwarding and Control Elements (ForCES) and Protocol-Oblivious Forwarding (POF) [2]. However, this standard protocol required modification of forwarding devices to support flow tables update operation [3]. Therefore, OpenFlow standard emerged to support the switch flow table without any modification but required controller intervention for further actions. Although, OpenState was developedas an extended OpenFlow 1.3 version with goal of delegating some control logic to the switches [4]. In other words, switches can handle packets locally without frequent controller intervention. However, OpenState has not been considered as future extended version of OpenFlow by the standard organization [5]. As a result, OpenFlow is considered the most popular southbound interface standardized by the Open Network Foundation [6] to control the behavior of OpenFlow switch. This way, OpenFlow uses Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) message to discover switches and links between SDN-Switches [7]. Afterward, the SDN controller defines flows and computes a path to redirect flows to their desired destination, and instructs the OpenFlow switches to install the corresponding rules to guide the routing process [8]. Usually, path selection decision occurs when there is a new network event or change in network status. For instance, network traffic rules have to be frequently updated on average every 1.5 to 5 s due to traffic variabilities exhibited by flows [9]. Similarly, the arrival of every new flow requires switches to request the controller for a new path. In either case, the route path computation activities need to take place immediately to converge with the new network event or network changes. The SDN controller used either a restoration or protection approach to compute a path and update the switch flow table [10]. In the former, upon arrival of a new flow, switch consult the controller to compute the new path to reroute flows to their destination. In contrast, the latter provisions path routing rules in advance before occurrences of the event. Therefore, it is obvious that protection may have better forwarding performance compared to restoration. However, the main concern is at the significant cost of Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) in the switch flow table. In other words, the flow table is mostly implemented with high-speed and expensive memory called TCAM. Thus, TCAM is affordable with limited size and capacity typically supporting around 2000 forwarding entries [11]. Hence, restoration offers more flexibility in dealing with frequent network changes but at the cost of time latency to compute a new path more often. In other words, searching for an optimal route might be costly in terms of the time required to calculate a new path and update the corresponding switches flow table [12]. The update operation is proportional to the number of flow rules in the switch flow table. Switches with a high load of flow tables tend to have higher update operation which may prolong the routing convergence time that is sensitive to some applications such as VoIP (Voice over IP). Traffic from delay-sensitive application flows must reach the intended destination without incurring significant flow setup latency typically within 25 ms [13]. The existing route path selection considers a single metric during path selection but does not optimize the switch update operation mainly caused by poor link quality and higher update operation in the switch flow table.