Nick Feamster
Jennifer Rexford
Ellen Zegura
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Abstract
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an exciting technology that enables innovation in how we design and manage networks. Although this technology seems to have appeared suddenly, SDN is part of a long history of efforts to make computer networks more programmable. In this paper, we trace the intellectual history of programmable networks, including active networks, early efforts to separate the control and data plane, and more recent work on OpenFlow and network operating systems. We highlight key concepts, as well as the technology pushes and application pulls that spurred each innovation. Along the way, we debunk common myths and misconceptions about the technologies and clarify the relationship between SDN and related technologies such as network virtualization.
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Index Terms
- The road to SDN: an intellectual history of programmable networks
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Reviews
Alberto Egon Schaeffer-Filho
Software-defined networking (SDN) is arguably the single most important development in the networking field in the past few years. SDN decouples how packets are forwarded between routers/switches (data plane) from how packets must be handled (control plane). Feamster et al. present a history lesson on how different technologies and paradigms played a role in shaping what is now called SDN. A chronological overview of past efforts in the area of programmable networking is depicted from early research on active networks, through control-data separation, and finally on to the more recent OpenFlow and network operating system efforts. Furthermore, the authors discuss what has driven the interest from academia and industry through the years: initially, it was the search for more pragmatism, and later it was the need to generalize previous solutions. Even experienced researchers and practitioners will appreciate the chronological relationships highlighted by the authors. Not surprisingly, many concerns faced earlier by more primitive solutions surfaced later in the SDN domain, including the need for distributed state management. The reliance on existing protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs) significantly limited what could be done in the early 2000s, but the authors emphasize that present-day SDN and OpenFlow as its primary realization build on similar principles for supporting a more general manner of network programming. If one thing is missing in this paper, however, it is a discussion on abstractions for expressing network programmability and for the specification of management functions. This would have included early work on policy-based network management (PBNM), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) script management information base (MIB), and more recent efforts along the lines of Pyretic. Online Computing Reviews Service
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