SDN evolution: the view from academia. Dr Brendan Jennings, TSSG

1. SDN Evolution: the View from Academia
Dr Brendan Jennings 31st March 2015

2. • Telecommunications software research group founded in 1996 by Dr Willie
Donnelly and Eamonn de Leastar
• Currently ~120 members:
• 20% post-doctoral researchers and PhD students
• 80% engineers / project managers / entrepreneurs / support staff
• One of Ireland’s leaders in EU collaborative R&D (FP5-7, Horizon 2020);
worked in projects with 500+ organisations
• Completed 100+ direct industry projects in Ireland over the past 5 years
• Created a number of spin out companies, including Feedhenry
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TSSG overview

3. • Network Architectures: what abstractions best realise the potential of
nascent network virtualisation technologies?
• Management Techniques: what algorithms, protocols and tools do we
need to manage programmable networks in a scalable manner?
• Information Security: how do we ensure that networks and the services
they support are properly protected from security threats?
• Engineering Services: what design patterns, tools and methodologies do
we need to better engineer communications services?
• Harnessing Data: how do we harness the data flowing through networks to
optimise the network and provide value to service users?
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TSSG research areas
Software Defined Networking

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SDN still a hot academic topic

5. • Intelligent Networks: 80s, 90s
• Active Networks: 90s, 00s
• Overlay Networks: 90s, 00s
• Software Routers: early 00s
• Open Signalling: early 00s
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It always was…

6. • OpenFlow based SDN seeing deployment
– Network virtualisation in multi-tenant data centres
– Enterprise WANs
• Heralds a paradigm shift for networking
– Software based Network Orchestration
– Control Plane Modularity
– Network Virtualisation – separating of mechanism from policy
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SDN: the positives

7. • No separation between specification of goals (policy)
and their implementation (mechanism) in OpenFlow
• Handles packet forwarding only, not packet processing
– Ignores widespread deployment of middleboxes
• Vendor lock-in problem not really solved
• Focus on single network domains
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SDN: the negatives

8. • Scott Shenker’s view of the evolutionary steps:
– Control plane modularity (OpenFlow)
– Network Virtualisation (mechanism/policy separation)
– Push the implementation of policy to the edge (simplified
core network, á la MPLS)
– Software at the edge (service virtualisation)
– Plus: learn from the Linux, Cloud and Data Analytics
ecosystems!
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SDN evolution

9. • TSSG-coordinated FP7 project looking at SDN
deployment in Data Centres
– Monitoring and Metrics
– Resource Allocation
– Network Search
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TSSG and SDN: SOLAS project

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11. Thank you for your attention
Any questions?