
Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive Survey [pdf] - superbaconman
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.0440.pdf
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contingencies
As someone who works in this area but is not aware of academic developments or
terminology, this looks like a great paper. Thanks for sharing. My direction:
[http://stani.sh/walter/pfcts/](http://stani.sh/walter/pfcts/)

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el_duderino
Here's some more info on SDN:
[http://www.networkworld.com/article/2159545/software/what-
is...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2159545/software/what-is-software-
defined-networking--sdn--.html)

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vkuruthers
Can anyone explain in simple terms why SDN is the "Cisco killer"?

~~~
yagibear
Traditionally the smarts that determine how the network is used (e.g.
optimising routes) were provided by the network devices, bundling hardware and
software. SDN allows the control to be separated from the hardware, rendering
the hardware a basic commodity. Cisco traditionally sold devices/hardware, and
would struggle to compete with commodity hardware. Cisco are trying to respond
by strengthening their software.

~~~
invaliddata
It's a little more nuanced than that. There are two basic orthogonal aspects
which scare the traditional network vendors.

1)The architectural separation of control and data planes, with the control
plane having a unified and global view over the entire network, allows network
functionality, currently primarily operational enhancements, that weren't
possible before. One example would be segmenting your network into many
logical networks, say one for each tier in your web application, and then
being able to arbitrarily place and move around VMs to different hosts with
the network automatically being reconfigured to make sure traffic goes where
it needs to but not anywhere else.

2) By removing most of the smarts from the data plane elements like switches
and routers, and with the rise of good merchant switching silicon, there is
little reason to pay a "Cisco tax," even if one weren't using the SDN
architectural model to do anything different from your legacy network.
Whitebox switches from OEMs like Quanta are really cheap compared to Cisco
switches. What's more, the majority of all Cisco revenue comes from switches
and related products like SFPs; Cisco is very exposed here. Whitebox products
have been available for some time, but the software side of these was very
weak. The SDN ecosystem that now exists has given rise to good alternatives on
the software side so that one can have a turnkey whitebox switching solution,
even if running a full SDN data center is not the plan.

If you look at what has happened architecturally in the most advanced data
centers (Google, facebook, amazon, etc), both of these advancements have the
norm for some time. The promise of SDN products made available to the general
public is that one can reap some of the benefits that Google, et al. have
realized, without having to hire an army of developers to reinvent the wheel.

It is not just Cisco that must respond to SDN, but Cisco, as the dominant
switch provider, has the most to lose.

