Introductio

n to

SOFTWARE-DEFINED
NETWORKING (SDN)
By : Kaniamgai Rongmei

Outline:
Existing Network System.
What is Software Defined Network?
What does SDN actually do?
SDN features.
Advantages of SDN.
Disadvantages of SDN.
Example of SDN.

Existing Network System:

The explosion of mobile devices and content, server
virtualization, and advent of cloud services are
among the trends driving the networking industry to
re-examine traditional network architectures.
Many conventional networks are hierarchical, built
with tiers of Ethernet switches arranged in a tree
structure. This design made sense when clientserver computing was dominant, but such a static
architecture is ill-suited to the dynamic computing
and storage needs of todays enterprise data
centers, campuses, and carrier environments.
Some of the key computing trends driving the
need for a new network paradigm include:

Changing traffic
patterns :
Within the enterprise data center, traffic patterns
have changed significantly. In contrast to clientserver applications where the bulk of the
communication occurs between one client and one
server, today's applications access different
databases and servers, creating a flurry of machineto-machine.
Finally, many enterprise data centers managers
are contemplating a utility computing
model, which might include a private
cloud, public cloud, or some mix of
both,
resulting in additional traffic across
the wide
area network.

Consumerization of IT :
Users are increasingly employing mobile personal
devices such as Smartphone, Tablets and
notebooks to access the corporate network.
IT is under pressure to accommodate these
personal devices in a fine-grained manner while
protecting corporate data and intellectual property
and meeting compliance mandates.

The rise of cloud services :

Enterprise business units now want the easy way to
access applications, infrastructure, and other IT
resources on demand. To add to the complexity, IT's
planning for cloud services must be done in an
environment of increased security, compliance, and
auditing requirements, along with business
reorganizations, combination, and mergers that can
change assumptions overnight. Providing self-service,
whether in a private or public cloud, requires elastic
scaling of computing, storage, and network
resources, ideally from a common viewpoint and
with a common suite of tools.

Big data :

Handling today's "big data" or mega datasets

requires massive parallel processing on thousands
of servers, all of which need direct connections to
each other. The rise of mega datasets is fueling a
constant demand for additional network capacity in
the data center. Operators of hyper scale data
center networks face the scary task of scaling the
network to previously unimaginable size,
maintaining any-to-any connectivity without
going broke.

What is SDN?
Software-defined networking (SDN)
is an approach to computer networking that
allows network administrators to manage network
services
through abstraction of
higher-level
functionality. This is done by separating the system
that makes decisions about where traffic is sent
(the control plane) from the systems that forward
traffic to the selected destination (the data plane),
enabling network control to become directly
programmable and the infrastructure to be
abstracted from applications and network
services.

Control Plane:
Makes decisions about where traffic is sent.
Control plane packets are destined to or
locally originated by the router itself.
The control plane functions include the system
configuration, management, and exchange of
routing table information.
The route controller exchanges the topology
information with other routers and constructs a
routing table based on a routing protocol.
Control plane packets are processed by the router
to update the routing table information.
It is the Signal controller of the network

Data Plane:
Also known as Forwarding Plane.
Forwards traffic to the next hop along the path to the
selected destination network according to control
plane logic.
Data plane packets go through the router.
The routers/switches use what the control plane built
to dispose of incoming and outgoing frames and
packets.

SDN Network Integration

What does SDN actually

do..?

SDN takes the virtualization phenomenon that's

been sweeping datacenters around the globe for the
past several years and extends it from computing
hardware and storage devices to network
infrastructure itself.
By inserting a layer of intelligent software between
network devices (such as switches, routers and
network cards) and the operating system that talks
to the hardware, software defined networking lets an
IT professional or administrator configure networks
using only software. No longer must he travel to
every physical device and configure or, in many
cases, reconfigure settings.

SDN Features:
Directly programmable: Network control is directly
programmable because it is separated from
forwarding functions.
Easy to Modify: Abstracting control from forwarding
lets administrators dynamically adjust network-wide
traffic flow to meet changing needs.
Centrally managed: Network intelligence is logically
centralized in software-based SDN controllers that
maintain a global view of the network, which
appears to
applications and policy as a
single, logical switch.

SDN Features:
Programmatically configured: SDN lets network
managers configure, manage, secure, and optimize
network resources very quickly via dynamic,
automated SDN programs, which they can write
themselves because the programs do not depend on
proprietary software.
Open standards-based and vendor-neutral:
When implemented through open standards,
SDN simplifies network design and operation
because instructions are provided by SDN
controllers instead of multiple, vendor-specific
devices and protocols.

Advantages of SDN:
Centralized network provisioning :
SDN provides a centralized view of the entire
network, making it easier to centralize enterprise
management and provisioning. SDN can accelerate
service delivery and provide more easy in
provisioning both virtual and physical network devices
from a central location.

 Holistic enterprise management :

Enterprise networks have to set up new
applications and virtual machines on demand to
accommodate new processing requests such as
those for big data.
SDN allows IT managers to experiment with
network configuration without impacting the network.
SDN also supports management of both physical
and virtual switches and network devices from a
central controller. SDN provides a single set of APIs
to create a single management console for physical
and virtual devices.

 Centralized Security :
With virtual machines coming and going as part of
physical systems, its more difficult to consistently
apply firewall and content filtering polices. When you
add in complexities such as securing BYOD
devices, the security problem is compounded.
The SDN Controller provides a central point of
control to distribute security and policy
information consistently throughout the
enterprise.

Hardware savings & Lower operating

costs :
Administrative efficiency, improvements in server
utilization, better control of virtualization, and other
benefits should result in operational savings.
SDN lower overall operating costs and result in
administrative savings since many of the routine
network administration issues can be centralized and
automated.

Cloud abstraction :
Cloud computing is here to stay and it is evolving
into a unified infrastructure. By abstracting cloud
resources using software defined networking, its
easier to unify cloud resources. The networking
components
that
make
up massive
data
center platforms can all be managed from the SDN
controller.

 Guaranteed content delivery :

The ability to shape and control data traffic is one of
the primary advantages of software defined
networking. Being able to direct and automate data
traffic makes it easier to implement quality of
services for voice over IP and multimedia
transmissions. Streaming high quality video is easier
because SDN improves network responsiveness to
ensure a flawless user experience.

Disadvantages of SDN :

Gateways between the virtual network and

systems on the physical network may need to pass
high volumes of traffic.
Software plays a major role in SDN and software
has bugs.
It takes time to setup all the connection and needs
and expertise.
The controller has to be of powerful system.

Example of SDN controller software

Open Daylight Project :
The Open Daylight Project is a collaborative open
source project hosted by The Linux Foundation. The
goal of the project is to accelerate the adoption
of software-defined networking (SDN) and create a
solid foundation for Network Functions
Virtualization(NFV). This software is written in Java.

THANKS
THANKS