In As an industry trend, Software Defined Networking (SDN) is as potent, vital and impactful as Virtualisation and cloud in IT space. Amandeep Singh Dang, Country Head-Networking, Dell India, says, Virtualisation is a technology to splice physical IT assets into virtual need based assets. Cloud is commercial/non-commercial business process modelling using Virtualisation as the technology, while SDN is the technology enabler that will allow virtualisation of networks or for cloud business modelling. All three are not the same; but they are inter-related and concurrent to the overall IT virtualisation wave that we are experiencing whether from a business process standpoint, or from a technology standpoint or from network as an IT element standpoint.
Sajan Paul, Director, Systems Engineering, India & SAARC, Juniper, points out that if IT managers are ready to jump aboard the SDN bandwagon, they might wonder where to begin. The answer is to start with virtualisation. Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) is a key part of a service providers broader SDN strategy. While NFV and SDN are often seen as separate technologies, the reality is that the two are highly complementary and it is in combination that they deliver the most value. NFV allows for the deployment of network components as software via virtual machines, says Paul.
There are already early implementations of network functions virtualisation that are resulting in more cost-effective operations and faster, more efficient deployment.
Paul reiterates that virtualising network functions is the first step towards building an agile network and truly leveraging SDN. Virtualisation not only provides quantifiable benefits, it allows providers to easily and quickly add capacity while dramatically lowering the operating costs associated with running their networks. With an agile network, providers can deliver more data more efficiently, and pioneer new revenue streams while increasing customer satisfaction along the way.
Ashish Khanna, AVP-IT, EIH Ltd, admits that since theSDN concept is still evolving, a lot of people are confused between SDN and network virtualisation, although in functionality, there is a thin line of difference between both technologies. The major difference is that network virtualisation focuses on combining a few hardware resources (from one vendor) and presenting them to the application and administrators as one common resource, while SDN abstracts the traditional networking hardware layers into software and hardware for efficient management of hardware and data flow, says Khanna.
LuiSimonetti and Gates Zeng Networking Systems Engineering Specialists, Avaya, maintain that virtualisation and Cloud are terms typically used to describe the decoupling of applications from the server environment which would normally host them. SDN is a big umbrella term which is mostly used to described the decoupling of the network infrastructure which would support such applications and server environments into two core components: the control side (Control Plane) and the network side (data forwarding)
SDN aims to facilitate virtualisation and Cloud by aligning the network infrastructure side of the service with the application side of the service.
For Avaya, the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) standard is the fabric that helps enable network virtualisation. With SPB, you can fluidly build network connectivity for an application and scale it to tens of thousands of virtualised networks. On the control side, it's all about being able to manage the network assets and communicate to applications running on the network.
Bimal Raj, CEO of Smart Link Network Systems Ltd., believes that having seen ups and downs in the economy for the last one decade, one of the priorities for most organisations is infrastructure cost control, both in terms of CAPEX and OPEX. CIOs and CTOs are also under the scanner by auditors or independent agencies to check how effectively they drive the show. However, the challenge for these CIOs is even more, since IT requirements are more demanding due to the increasing use of the web world today. Thankfully, the Applications and Operating systems have move beyond proprietary hardware based approach and are free to move from one platform to other seamlessly. The growth of virtualisation has remarked a notable journey especially in cloud environments. Both private and public cloud service providers enjoy the benefits of the virtualisation which not only provided agility but also 100 per cent redundancy, he says.
However, when coming to network infrastructure, most of the data centre deployments today end up with standard driven protocols/codes written by most hardware vendors which leave no space for innovation and experimentation. According to Raj, although standards are beneficial for seamless operations, the standardisation itself takes years which may not be required for internal implementations but still organisations need to depend on hardware vendors.
Unfortunately, there was no way to work in the "Open" manner when it came to Switching Hardware and Switch Control System which had to be from the same OEM till a few years ago. However, SDN has paved way for innovation and experimentation in DCs using the open platform approach. SDN basically allows to control network traffic using a centralised controller (mostly different from Switching Hardware vendor) and leaves only forwarding jobs to switch ASICs. This allows controlling network traffic behavior in a more flexible manner even without using protocols like STP, RSTP etc. Customers can use SDN capable that is, open flow based switches from different vendors, he remarks. Many switching vendors have released this hardware which works with controllers seamlessly. The popular controllers today are Bigswitch, POX, plus many open source.
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