SDN Evolution: the View from Academia

Dr Brendan Jennings 31st March 2015

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• 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

www.tssg.org

TSSG overview

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• 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?

www.tssg.org

TSSG research areas

Software Defined Networking

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SDN still a hot academic topic

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• Intelligent Networks: 80s, 90s

• Active Networks: 90s, 00s

• Overlay Networks: 90s, 00s

• Software Routers: early 00s

• Open Signalling: early 00s

www.tssg.org

It always was…

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• 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

www.tssg.org

SDN: the positives

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• 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 domainswww.tssg.org

SDN: the negatives

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• 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!

www.tssg.org

SDN evolution

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• TSSG-coordinated FP7 project looking at SDN

deployment in Data Centres

– Monitoring and Metrics

– Resource Allocation

– Network Search

www.tssg.org

TSSG and SDN: SOLAS project

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Thank you for your attention

Any questions?