Running head: SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKS 1

Software Defined Networks

Claude Louis-Charles

NorthCentral University
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Software Defined Networks

Introduction

Software-defined networking can be defined as a new approach to computer

networking which allows a network administrator to control, initialise, manage and change a

network’s behaviour using an open interface and reduce its lower level capabilities. Software-

defined networking highlights the reality that static architecture used in traditional networks

cannot support the storage needs, scalable computing and dynamic nature of new and modern

computing systems and environments like data centres (Farhady, Lee, & Nakao, 2015).

Achieving such standards is done by disassociating or decoupling the computer system that is

responsible for decision-making regarding the network’s traffic, which is done by the control

plane, from the underneath system that forwards the specific traffic to a predetermined

destination.

Software-defined networking is closely associated with the OpenFlow Protocol that

ensures remote communication with various network place constituents to make sure the

correct path for the network packets is well defined across all the network switches. There

has been a tremendous transition from Openflow protocols.

Over the last several years, software-defined networking (SDN) is the preferred

architecture most companies are implementing due to its cost-effectiveness, adaptability,

manageability and as well as being dynamic, which ensures it is suitable for supporting high

bandwidths. This architecture primarily focuses on decoupling forwarding functions and

network controls, and ensuring network controls becomes directly programmable (Farhady,

Lee, & Nakao, 2015). Its main characteristics of the architecture include agility,

programmatically configured, direct programming, centrally managed, vendor neutral and is

open-standard based.
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Source 1

Barona López, L. I., García Villalba, L. J., Valdivieso Caraguay, Á. L., & López, D. (2015).

Trends on virtualisation with software defined networking and network function

virtualisation. IET Networks, 4(5), 255-263. doi:10.1049/iet-net.2014.0117

According to the journal titled ‘Trends on virtualisation with software defined

networking and network function virtualisation’ by Barona López, L. I., García

Villalba, L. J., Valdivieso Caraguay, Á. L., & López, D., They highlight the fact that

software-defined networking, as well as network functional virtualisation, has had a

significant impact in the technology industry over the last few years. From their

perspective, the authors deem that software-defined networking separates the data

plane from the control plane, which allows introduction and innovation of new

services in an effective and simple manner. With other proprietary devices such as

firewalls and load balancers are installed and used in several devices in the network

system, network functional virtualisation focuses to re-establish the existing network

functions and introduce a new software environment through the use of cloud

technologies and virtualisation. The article also shows that by re-establishing the

existing network functions and introduces a new software environment through

employing cloud technologies and virtualisation will also lead to the reducing the

allocated financial amounts for the management and provisioning of telcom services.

The authors conduct a survey of software defined networking as well as network

functional virtualisation while focusing on virtualisation projects and instances where

these two technologies can be effectively and successfully employed while studying

the relationship between the two technologies.

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After conducting the survey and analysing the impact of the technologies, the authors

realised that these technologies are used by a lot of customers as numerous services

are developed and introduced into the market every day. Software-defined networks,

as well as network functional virtualisation, have the capability of reducing the

development period of new applications by accelerating the new various testing

processes and reducing the expenditures while focusing on producing high-quality

services for the customer. As the technology industry is changing into a software-

driven industry, most networks will implement a software-driven model and use

standard hardware. This will enhance customisation levels while satisfying all the

customer’s requirements while minimising the expenditure levels. In the end, the two

technologies introduce a lot of benefits to the technology and networking industries.

Source 2

Farhady, H., Lee, H., & Nakao, A. (2015). Software-Defined Networking: A

survey. Computer Networks, 81, 79-95. doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2015.02.014

Hamid Farhady, HyunYong Lee and Akihiro Nakao, states that the software-defined

networking has the primary capability of simplifying the management of networks

while enabling new research on innovations that are based on the decoupling of the

data and control planes. The authors have focused on reviewing the two technologies,

which are software-defined networking and network functional virtualisation. They

have focused on three major categories when reviewing the technologies: the data

plane, the control plane and the applications with the hope that the results will

ultimately assist researchers in establishing meaningful and successful directions any

future software-defined networking research.

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After completely studying the technologies, the authors identified three major future

directions that other researchers can focus on to enhance the efficiency of the

technologies. The first one was the data plane programmability. From earlier

conducted surveys, the authors realised that this feature was missing since it was

developed and implemented in its early stages. By employing FLARE, which is a

programmable network node, it can be used as the main hardware platform as well as

enabling control and data plane programmability whilst making sure the device is

scalable and has high performance.

The second direction is the technology’s platform independence, which

would focus the technologies to have less dependence on other devices such as the

GPU, NPU and the CPU and software. This will be only achieved by modifying the

current SDN architecture. The third direction would be its deployment in large

networks and various data centres across the world with the aim of eliminating the

current network issues and discovering new opportunities.

The last future direction is the user-driven control by utilising end-user APIs

that will give the user more roles within the network, which will be made possible by

introducing the APIs in between the client’s applications and the network control

plane. In the end, the authors concluded that SDN is currently popular in the

networking because of its interesting features and the innovative methods of network

design and organisation it introduces.

Source 3

Open Networking Foundation. (2012). Software-Defined Networking: The New Norm for

Networks. Retrieved from

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https://www.opennetworking.org/images/stories/downloads/sdn-resources/white-

papers/wp-sdn-newnorm.pdf

According to the Open Networking Foundation (2012), traditional network

architecture does not have the capability of satisfying the requirements of current end-users,

carriers and enterprises. However, due to the enhancement of the OpenFlow protocols,

software-defined networking was developed and has played a vital role in the transformation

of the networking architecture. This new technology has enabled the architecture to decouple

the data and control planes, centralise the state and network intelligence and abstract the

applications from the core network infrastructure (Open Networking Foundation, 2012). This

will result in enabling the carries and enterprises to obtain the ability to automate, program

and control the entire network, which will ultimately deliver flexible and highly scalable

networks that can easily adapt to any future business needs.

The authors deem that software-defined networking separates the data plane from the

control plane, which allows introduction and innovation of new services in an effective and

simple manner. The article also shows that by re-establishing the existing network functions

and introduces a new software environment through employing cloud technologies and

virtualisation will also lead to the reducing the allocated financial amounts for the

management of the network. Software-defined networking has introduced benefits such as

centralising the control and management of the devices in the network, improving the

management and automation using APIs to separate the core network infrastructure from

applications and ensuring fast innovation of applications for the network to ensure that it

meets the customer’s requirements. Finally, the article concludes by stating that SDN offers a

flexible and dynamic network architecture that offers an effective network that can be

customisable later in the future to meet future business needs.

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Source 4

Jain, R. (2013). Introduction to Software Defined Networking (SDN). Retrieved from

http://www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse570-13/m_16sdn.htm

The author states that Software-defined networking originated from the pre-existing

OpenFlow protocol. Software-defined networking is an evolved version of the

OpenFlow protocol and enabled the new architecture to have new features such as

easy to program, implement the software-defined network and enable the changing of

the routeing policies that exist in the network. From their perception, the authors

deem that software-defined networking separates the data plane from the control

plane, which allows introduction and innovation of new services in an effective and

simple manner. The SDN has also enabled the centralising the control and

management of the devices in the network, improving the management and

automation using APIs to separate the core network infrastructure from applications.

The author highlights the importance of remembering that SDN is not a mechanism,

but an advanced network architecture that is focused on solving current networking

issues.

Additionally, SDN has five core functionalities which include agility,

programmatically configured, direct programming, centrally managed, vendor

neutral and is open-standard based. It is currently the preferred type of network

architecture and most companies are implementing due to its cost-effectiveness,

adaptability, manageability and as well as being dynamic, which ensures it is suitable

for supporting high bandwidths. This architecture primarily focuses on decoupling

forwarding functions and network controls, and ensuring network controls becomes

directly programmable (Open Networking Foundation, 2012). SDN introduces

SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKS 8

additional benefits to the architecture such as virtualisation, orchestration,

programmability, automation, dynamic scaling, multi-tenancy, performance, service

integration and visibility. Lastly, it employs the use of numerous northbound and

southbound APIs, tools and intermediate services within the networking industry like

ALTO, PCE, ForCES, and XMPP.

Source 5

Kreutz, D., Ramos, F. M., Esteves Verissimo, P., Esteve Rothenberg, C., Azodolmolky, S.,

& Uhlig, S. (2015). Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive

Survey. Proceedings of the IEEE, 103(1), 14-76. doi:10.1109/jproc.2014.2371999

In this article, the authors who include Diego Kreutz, Fernando M. V. Ramos, Paulo

Verissimo, Steve Uhlig, Christian Esteve Rothenberg and Siamak Azodolmolky have

all acknowledged that the expansion of the internet has created a digital society,

where a person can access anything due to the connectivity offered by the internet.

This has been supported by traditional networks and IP addresses that are complex in

nature and difficult to manage. Such networks experience issues when it comes to

configuring the network according to the predefined policies as well as reconfiguring

it to solve changes, loads and faults. This led to the development of the software-

defined networking with the aim of decoupling the data and control planes, centralise

the state and network intelligence and abstract the applications from the core network

infrastructure. It also aims at enabling the carriers and enterprises to obtain the ability

to automate, program and control the entire network, which will ultimately deliver

flexible and highly scalable networks that can easily adapt to any future industry

needs.
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The authors define the SDN as a new approach to computer networking which allows

a network administrator to control, initialise, manage and change a network’s

behaviour using an open interface and reduce its lower level capabilities. The article

also highlights the primary building blocks of the software-defined networking

architecture as well as providing an in-depth breakdown of the existing hardware

infrastructure. The authors show the roles and importance the northbound and

southbound APIs play in the software-defined networking, the SDN controllers and

the various network applications. The article concludes by stating that SDN

introduced measures of solving long-standing problems that existed in the traditional

networks. It also introduces additional benefits to the architecture such as

virtualisation, orchestration, programmability, automation, dynamic scaling, multi-

tenancy, performance, service integration and visibility.

Source 6

Citrix. (2014). SDN 101: An Introduction to Software Defined Networking - Citrix.

Retrieved from

https://www.citrix.com/content/dam/citrix/en_us/documents/products-solutions/sdn-

101-an-introduction-to-software-defined-networking.pdf

Over the last one year, Citrix noted that network virtualization and software-defined

networking were the most talked topics in the networking industry and this is due to

the effectiveness and revolutionary attributes they introduced in the industry. Both

network virtualization and software-defined networking are being used by numerous

vendors to offer networking solutions to their clients, thus enhancing the popularity

of the new architecture. The article notes that traditional approach of networking
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focused on implementing network functionality through dedicated appliances such as

an ASIC, router, switch or a delivery controller. However, over time, the networks

started evolving, and most of them had to start using software-defined networking to

eliminate existing issues such as limited functionality and innovations, static nature

and high level of OPEX.

Software-defined networking has introduced benefits such as centralising the control

and management of the devices in the network, improving the management and

automation through the use of APIs to separate the core network infrastructure from

applications and ensuring fast innovation of applications for the network to ensure

that it meets the customer’s requirements. It has five core functionalities which

include agility, programmatically configured, direct programming, centrally

managed, vendor neutral and is open-standard based. Citrix also highlights the role

network virtualisation plays in the network, which is providing an end-to-end

networking capability to the applications by abstracting them from the core network

infrastructure. In the end, it is important to remember that software-defined

networking is a network architecture and not a form of technology while network

virtualization should be viewed as a software-defined networking application.

Source 7

Goeringer, S. (2015). Software Defined Networking. Retrieved from

www.polarstarconsulting.com/SDN%20Introduction.pdf

Steve Goeringer states that software-defined networking (SDN) is one of the most

talked topics in the networking industry and this is due to the effectiveness and

revolutionary attributes they introduced in the industry and has a potential market of
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approximately $ 1 trillion within the coming years. Software-defined networking

introduces benefits to the architecture such as virtualisation, orchestration,

programmability, automation, dynamic scaling, multi-tenancy, performance, service

integration and visibility. SDN is able to centralise the network’s control by moving

it from existing routers and switches in the network to an SDN controller. The author

states that the SDN enables the management of network traffic all at once rather than

separate traffic from the interconnected devices through the use of and standard and

open interface.

This architecture primarily focuses on decoupling forwarding functions and network

controls, and ensuring network controls becomes directly programmable (Goeringer,

2015). Its main goals and characteristics of the architecture include agility,

programmatically configured, direct programming, centrally managed, vendor

neutral and is open-standard based. Its main components include applications,

network elements and controllers. The article states that SND has the potential to

make improvements in communication and information technology that can be

applied in a lot of environments. It can result in several benefits such as simplified

operations, superior scalability, improved customer experience, quicker service

delivery and enhanced cost effectiveness.

Source 8

Braun, W., & Menth, M. (2014). Software-Defined Networking Using OpenFlow: Protocols,

Applications and Architectural Design Choices. Future Internet, 6(2), 302-336.

doi:10.3390/fi6020302
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Wolfgang Braun and Michael Menth state that software-defined networking (SDN) is

one of the most talked topics in the networking industry and this is due to its

revolutionary attributes and benefits it introduced in the networking industry. SDN

has been able to accomplish its function by disassociating or decoupling the

computer system that is liable for decision-making concerning the network’s traffic,

which is done by the control plane, from the underneath system that forwards the

specific traffic to a determined destination. Through standardised interfaces, SDN

has enabled cheaper and less specific hardware to be controlled by various

applications in the network. Software-defined networking is closely associated with

the OpenFlow Protocol that ensures remote communication with various network

place constituents to make sure the correct path for the network packets is well

defined across all the network switches.

The authors highlight the roles of northbound and southbound APIs play in the

software-defined networking, SDN controllers and the various network applications.

The article also states how SDN employs the use of numerous northbound and

southbound APIs, tools and intermediate services within the networking industry like

ALTO, PCE, ForCES, and XMPP with the aim of improving the network. The

article concludes by stating that SDN introduced measures of solving long-standing

problems that existed in the traditional networks.