
Google's Move to Software-Defined Networking - alanfranzoni
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?ref=rss&id=2856460
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Animats
_" Basically, what I think Google and some other companies find attractive
about SDN is the ability to affect policy more directly from a single location
with one view of the network as a whole."_

That's "Software defined networking", which is a lot like virtual circuits.
The first time A tries to send to B, a request is sent to some central server
which decides if A can talk to B, how A gets to reach B, and whether it's
desirable to listen in or MITM the conversation. The central server then sets
up the routing, but doesn't handle the traffic.

This is amazingly like Tymnet, circa 1969.

Amazon has something like this internally, which they use as a big patchboard
for their servers. This gives them freedom in allocating IP addresses. It's am
example of "There is no problem in computer science which cannot be solved by
adding another layer of indirection."

~~~
ChuckMcM
Everything old is new again :-) I read through the SDN specs and thought "Hmm,
this reads like they are trying to implement ATM, badly." But one of the
really fun things is that nearly all of the switching fabric patents from
DEC/Tandem/Etc. from the 90's are evaporating and so we can actually build
something like ATM now without getting bogged down in that mess. Because of
that I'm pretty optimistic that it will make things a bit better than they
were.

~~~
windowsworkstoo
Indeed. While I am not a fan of everyone "doing SDN", I did enjoy this
article. It seems that Google are doing interesting stuff, in so far as
rejecting legacy protocols where practical (i.e their private WAN) and
building something better, which hopefully will eventually seep into common
knowledge and usage.

