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SDN: Will Moms miss the good old fan?

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Preeti
New Update

INDIA: Roads in cities. Lanes on roads. Crossroads in lanes. Traffic lights on crossroads. Cars waiting at traffic lights. Drivers waiting in cars. And engines and wheels of these cars in the hand of drivers.

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Now imagine something different. Swap drivers for sensors. (Not totally a fantasy walk given the way a search engine giant has already shifted some gears here). Instead of drivers inside cars, let someone else sitting at the top of a tree (sorry a skyscraper) run these cars with a remote control. The same way we enjoy our car video games. 

What is the worst that can happen? Or let's say otherwise. It can make traffic jams less of a pickle. It can let a bigger-picture-view take care of congestions. It can make it easier to pluck a car off a road if it is more of an encumbrance for any reason. It can make managing signals fun. It can also mean more accidents. Or lesser or safer run-ins? It can mean that every time you have to make a car turn a new lane or stop somewhere you do not have to wait to speak to the driver inside. And lo! It can also mean you save on drivers. May be in a few days these centrally orchestrated cars can turn a new page for bigger infrastructure chapters, nation-wide transport management and public transport fabric, and while we are imagining, why not be more wistful and think if they can connect to satellites in the sky and make more fairy-tale stuff possible.

So far, it is pie in the sky, we know. But if you happen to be in the cities of networking, the idea may sound less of a Jamais Vu and more of a Presque Vu already. Because a new acronym called SDN has arrived and settled itself in the networking topography. With Software Defined Networking or SDN, control need no longer be confined into a hardware, a switch or routed through traditional means. It can be vacuumed away from all physical wagons and handed over to software that can make the most of the space between control layer and data layers.

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So, software runs networking and with this abstraction more delicious pies in the sky here can be baked. It can mean that cloud computing and virtualization get a new force. It can mean that networks can be better managed, less expensive and more intelligent. It may also mean that SDN and its brother NFV (Network Function Virtualisation) completely capsize the way we think of, buy, sell and configure networking. Remote managing those packets of cars inside networking lanes can mean more than some drivers off the wheel. Or not?

SDN, really a new wine?

The idea can be traced back to some campus networks where in the pursuit of new protocol related experiments some researchers stumbled upon the possibility of SDN. The irritatingly frequent need of altering the software in the network devices every time, made them think of programming the network devices and letting control to go to a central spot.

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Yes, SDN moves network control from hardware and software running on network switches to network controller software running on servers, resulting in increased control and flexibility.

"Automating and orchestrating network management and control for evolving multi-tenant and heterogeneous network environments are core objectives of SDN. There are several technologies that can enable SDN, such as OpenFlow and OpenStack. We can focus on OpenFlow, which is a communication interface between control plane and data plane," as Raman Santhanakrishnan - MD, LSI India helps with his angle on the new force.

Sounds like SDN is here and is here to stay. Industry-experts from Dell second this hope. Terry Seeto, Director, DELL Networking Sales Engineering for APAC and Japan, is sure that SDN is not a buzz anymore and is driving real and active deployments in India already.

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"Nine or ten networking-focused customers in India who I meet are asking about it seriously." He cites. "New environments with Cloud, Big Data and new applications have made it imperative to relook at networking in a fresh way. Traditional switches were locked in. Today, with virtualization and changing workloads and more APIs as well as different vendor approaches, programmability and agility have become critical. Industry is hence definitely moving to SDN approaches."

Santhanakrishnan feels that Software defined networks (SDN) enables datacenter and service providers to manage network configuration, management, routing and policy enforcement more efficiently.

The market is bound to turn a new shade with the ongoing convergence of video, cloud-based applications and the exploding adoption of mobile devices and services that are having an unprecedented impact on carrier networks.

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"Network operators are under tremendous pressure to deploy newer, value-added services to increase revenue per user and grow subscriber numbers while lowering capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditures (OpEx). In order to meet this challenge, carriers leverage datacenters to help create these services and results in tighter integration of the traditionally separate datacom/IT and telecom networks to form a unified network. Now, by extending the virtualization technologies that are already well-adopted in datacenters into the carrier network domain, the overall end-to-end network utilization and operational efficiencies can be improved and become more cost effective."

Software ‘versus' hardware

It might be interesting to dwell on how this new power injected into software affects the hardware siblings and whether or how does it kill or procreate markets ahead?

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Dell, for one, is all out to support traditional networking as well as SDN ones. Seeto's comrade Amandeep Singh Dang, Country Manager, Dell Networking illustrates how Dell's open approach to products and development is in sync with the markets. "All the hardware together with an open SDN flow and endless workload provisioning, or self-provisioning capabilities of APIs is a great idea. SDN will definitely hit terrific commercial levels in two to three years." He reckons.

More so as at some point, hardware is bound to stagnate and that way it makes sense for companies like Dell to be the early bird and catch the SDN worm in time.

This changes the economic dynamic surrounding networking effectively commoditizing much of the hardware, Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst, Enderle Group observes. "It provides higher flexibility and can result in better network optimization and performance at a far lower price."

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From Santhanakrishnan's view, the creation of SDN con¬trollers and switches requires the resolution of many hardware and platform support challenges. LSI, he says, focuses on solving some of these challenges by deploying intelligent silicon solutions leading to seam¬less adoption of SDN.

Wait, SDN means simplicity?

With SDN around the space will definitely undergo many blueprint changes, some simple, some rigorous and intricate. In fact, many watchers feel that complexity will be a big baggage to pack light before SDN can be expected to take off. IT departments and their management or investments will have to do a complete overhaul look before jumping onto anything.

Complexity wise SDN can mean new things for everyone. As to whether all this unlocking makes networking simpler or trickier than before, Singh has no doubt, when he opines that unlocking always breaks traditional monopoly barriers. "Then interoperability happens. SDN makes talking to ecosystem and other parts pretty seamless, with the de-cluttering of protocols. It may take SDN to commercialise to a no-control-panel hardware level, but it is on its way and eventually many areas will get commoditised." He reckons from what he is witnessing now.

What can be improved upon though is still a work-in-progress. Support for the continuation of traditional control plane, which does not require a central controller; Fast Path architecture supporting multiple flow tables with ordered tree look-up and hash table in all hardware; Value-added features such as Ethernet OAM/BFD, Security - Firewall and SSL/TLS, DPI, finer grain QoS management, service and application aware routing and switching; Partial switch configuration, and switching configuration by multiple OpenFlow configuration points and greater/ deterministic performance with a large number of flows with low latency, are some areas that Santhanakrishnan puts a spotlight on; thus emphasizing how the future SDN-enabled switches require intelligent control and data plane instructions.

As per what a Forrester report advised on the subject, I&O wants the power to leverage the network as needed. Consequently, networking teams should focus on how to deliver a scalable, secure, simple, shared, and standardized platform and not worry about where the programming is going to take place. SDN is one component of virtual network infrastructure.

SDN and Spends

SDN has not only a lot packed under its sleeve from a technology side but it can change economics for many hardware and IT spend areas in future.

From what the Forrester report observed in 2012, most of the equipment today is built with highly specialized application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) - and a high price point to go along with them. "Even though networking accounts for a single-digit percentage of hardware spend, many believe that it could be lower if vendors could leverage commodity x86 platforms." It reasoned rightly.

Seeto and Singh from Dell do not see anything slowing down. In fact, networking will become more crucial and powerful with a new IT edge, is what they opine.

Look at it the other way. New game-changers like NFV, or Cloud or virtualization can in fact complement or take impetus from what SDN can possibly do ahead. It can also, on the other hand, mean a new market up-for-grabs for processing powerhouses like Intel, with the need for specialized silicon.

The telecom industry today, fueled by exploding growth in mobile data usage and subscriber base, is undergoing a huge transformation, like what Santhanakrishnan sees. "Service providers are under enormous pressure to deploy newer value-added services at lower costs. To achieve this, carriers are integrating and storage processing and result in a unified datacenter-carrier network model."

 

With investments in Cloud or virtualization, SDN related work can be a good prefix or suffix.

This is possible as SDN allows network functions and applications to leverage virtualized datacenter resources, while using NFV and SDN, carriers can scale to deploy innovative services and increase subscriber base within CapEx and OpEx budgets.

Think of NFV, and one may see new disruptors playing along.

It has been often argued that approaches that flank around SDN like demarcation of the control and data forwarding planes will be great for performance, compatibility wand operational agility. It can be the other way round too with NFV giving infrastructure buttress to SDN and both can chase the land of commodity servers and switches together.

SDN and standards

Every technology depends on the right evolution and timing of standards, else it succumbs to simple-looking potholes. OpenFlow and Open Daylight are two action-spots in the SDN realm. But it is too soon to judge what and when will a right force help SDN firmly in its saddle.

Standards always lag efforts like this with the fastest moving vendors always working ahead of the standards. It's the nature of the technology cycle, Enderle quips.

Commenting on the pace and adequacy of standards, Santhanakrishnan argues that OpenFlow protocols are one possible solution for implementing SDN within datacenter and enterprise networks. "LSI has enabled industry-leading OpenFlow v1.3 platform on Axxia communication processors with superior flexibility and programmability. LSI has simplified SDN migration by providing intelligent silicon solutions capable of supporting SDN protocols in addition to traditional switching functions."

So far

SDN can also mean that intelligence will travel and reside and may even grow in new ways than we thought till now. As to SDN leading to scalability, better configurations, and active networking soon, there is no doubt. Enderle affirms that all three will happen as that is its primary purpose.

 

The current state of networking, according to the Forrester report ON Workload Centric Infrastructure, can be in many ways traced to ARPANET's principle of a single method to reliably communicate a host of multiple sets of flows, traffic, and workloads. Basically, voice, video, and all applications traverse the same rigid and static set of links that only change when a failure occurs.

"The network can't differentiate users, applications, or workloads because it focuses on links being up and down, traffic congestion, and a few other factors. The infrastructure can't be sliced up dynamically to aggregate a set amount of resources to support a workload." as it explained.

Ask Santhanakrishnan and he elaborates how carrier mobile core networks consist of network elements that reside between radio access networks (RANs) and the Internet. Core networks are transforming to support towards a variety of cellular technologies such as 3G, long-term evolution (LTE), 4G, etc.

From where seasoned industry-watcher Enderle stands, SDN does enable intelligence but doesn't assure it.

It is simple to understand this. "Once you have a SDN you could better overlay a more effective intelligent management system over it. In short it is more flexible so it enhances anyone or any management application, intelligent or not, placed over it. "

Nevertheless, SDN has generated a lot of excitement and buzz because of what it can do. "The industry is moving fast towards a SDN world and will take more value out of it." If what Seeto augurs is actually morphing then the world will change in more than just an abstract sense for networking.

Change and alarm clocks-that-jog-around-the-room are two things that make sure they do wake up those who slumber. Unless, of course, if some Moms miss that whirring sound.