Software-Defined Network

Overview

ABSTRACT

Although IP networks were first designed for best effort traffic, they soon had to support more value added services. This was done by adding new technology bricks to the base IP specification. However, IP networks have still been provisioned and operated by humans, despite the increasing complexity of the technologies involved, the services deployed, and the need for rapid service delivery. Flexibility, agility and speed are key customer requirements. This means making the network more programmable by creating interfaces between applications and the network. These interfaces and the associated architectures can take many forms. This network programming concept is not restricted to IP technology: it can be applied to other types of network.

Read this article from a comprehensive knowledge base, updated and supplemented with articles reviewed by scientific committees.

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AUTHOR

Stéphane Litkowski: IP/MPLS network architect and expert - Orange Business Services, International Networks Division, Cesson Sévigné, France

INTRODUCTION

In the SDN article – part 1 [TE 7 609] , we reviewed the history of IP networks in order to understand their evolution. This gave us a good understanding of current limitations and introduced the need for programmable networks via SDN techniques.

In this article, we'll be taking a closer look at other SDN use cases and their implementations, and presenting some of the technologies currently in vogue. In particular, this article will cover transport optimization in IP/MPLS network cores, the link between SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV), and an overview of current solutions on the market.

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