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Software Defined Networking

Introduction

Software defined networking can be described as drastic fresh thoughts in networking that guarantees or assures dramatic simplification of network administration and permit innovation throughout network programmability. This paper describes the technical details of software defined networking with respect to what it does, what it improved, how it changes our technology and the future that comes with it (Nunes 2014). The Open Network Foundation defines software defined networking as a network architecture where network control is decoupled from forwarding and is directly programmable (Alaettinoglu 2013).

Technical aspects of Software Defined Networking

The software defined network is a group of northbound application interfaces that permits an application to reprogram the network. The software defined architecture comprises of three main components namely the application, the controller and forwarders. The application component defines bandwidth calendaring, demand placement and service deployment. The controller component defines the service, network and device control while forwarder defines the physical or virtual routers and/or switches. The centralized controller is responsible for the management of many switches. The controller can be decoupled physically from the forwarder. Programmability with no decoupling of controller to the forwarder is regularly known as software derived networking, also called software defined networking. The decoupling of controller from the forwarder might have self-governing advantage. It might make it feasible to set up switches from commercial off the shelf hardware components. Decoupling of forwarder and controller makes the protocols such as OpenFlow Open network Foundation to be utilized amid the controller and the forwarder for the purpose of programming the forwarder. The diagram in figure (A) bellow shows the architecture of software defined networking (Alaettinoglu 2013).

The major component of software defined networking is the controller which offers northbound application interface to the applications. It can make possible programming, reconfiguring and reorganizing of networks on behalf of the applications. The controller can also track all requests for applications, uphold network topology model as well as maintaining loads of traffic, utilizing this to calculate application paths in addition to programming the forwarders. The diagram in figure (B) bellow illustrates the controller component part of software defined networking (Alaettinoglu 2013).

Figure B: The controller Architecture

Figure A: Architecture of Software Defined Networking

The most well known software defined networking application is the network virtualization. Nevertheless, a number of current applications are developed as cloud applications to allow access by users irrespective of their location or device they use. The majority of virtualization applications generates a virtualization network amid virtual switches to link virtual machines. The applications makes Application interface calls to the bandwidth broker with an aim of requesting a given quantity of bandwidth to be assigned to them. This assignment can be done either immediately or at given time in future.. The broker can either accept or deny the request. In the case of acceptance,, the application traffic can be routed on the existing paths or newly established paths. Software defined networking is thus a natural approach to implementing bandwidth calendaring (Alaettinoglu 2013).

What software defined networking does

Software defined networking being a new paradigm in networking advocates the separation of data plane alongside control plane. By so doing, it makes network switches in the data plane to be simple packet forwarding devices. It also uses logically centralized software program to control the activities of the whole network. Software defined networking also permits regular modifications to network situations and state. It offers support for network design by means of high level language in addition to offering visibility. It also offers control over tasks for conducting diagnosis for network with troubleshooting. The technologies used for software defined networking also allows operators of the network to implement extensive range of policies for network in a high level language policy. Moreover, it aids in in easy determination of sources of problems in performance of the network. In the process of improving network management, software defined networking uses network policies that automatically respond to low level events of the network. (Hyojoon, and Feamster 2013).

The Open Flow which is an embodiment of software defined networking embraces the example of extremely programmable switch infrastructure which allows software to calculate the maximum routing flow choice on demand. In the case of current networks which have to deal with virtualization of host and dynamic application migration in an increasing way, OpenFlow might provide the agility required to work with dynamic network orchestration further than that which can be achieved by conventional networks (Shin 2013).

What Software defined networking Improves

Software defined networking improves network management tasks and security of communication network. It also improves the visibility and control over tasks for carrying out network diagnosis. In overall, software defined networking improves network performance, scalability, efficiency and even availability. This implies that reliability of the communication network is improved as well. The improvement in security in this case means that the incidences caused by cyber criminals such as hacking and others are also minimized (Kim 2014, Yeganeh, Amin , and Yashar 2013).

How Software defined networking changes our technology

The fresh virtual machines are added or deleted as the application user base grows or shrinks respectively. The virtual machines are also migrated to better save the user group as the user geography also changes. This virtual machine migration can also help in offering continuity of business during down time caused by rolling black outs or natural disasters. The additions, deletions and migrations of virtual machines can also be carried out by means of programming. Nonetheless, the network requires to be reconfigured to reflect these changes in order to keep the technology current. It is the network virtualization that permits this reconfiguration to be programmed by the virtual machine management system. The reconfiguration must always be normally performed during windows maintenance (Alaettinoglu 2013).

The future that comes with Software defined networking

The future that comes with software defined networking consists of increase in traffic loads which also call for increase in bandwidth and transmission speed. The past traffic volumes can be employed in producing future profiles in traffic. These profiles can determine whether the application should be allowed to run or not. As a result, fresh ideas also continues to emerge that simplifies network management and further innovation through fresh programming. Therefore, the current ideas are used to examine the future implications which are explored through research directions that are based on software defined networking paradigm.

Works cited

Nunes, B., et al. “A survey of software-defined networking: Past, present, and future of programmable networks.” (2014): 1-18.

Kim, Hyojoon, and Nick Feamster. “Improving network management with software defined networking.” Communications Magazine, IEEE 51.2 (2013): 114-119.

Shin, Seungwon, et al. “FRESCO: Modular Composable Security Services for Software-Defined Networks.” NDSS. 2013.

Alaettinoglu, Cengiz. “Software Defined Networking.” (2013).

Yeganeh, Soheil Hassas, Amin Tootoonchian, and Yashar Ganjali. “On scalability of software-defined networking.” Communications Magazine, IEEE 51.2 (2013): 136-141