SDN: Software Defined Networks

Foreword by David Meyer

David Meyer

Although the ideas underlying software-defined networking (SDN) have only recently come into the public consciousness, a few of us who are active in the research, operator, and vendor communities immediately saw the applicability of SDN-like techniques to data center and service provider environments (and beyond). In addition to the explosion of innovative thinking going on in the research community, we also saw SDN as a programmatic way to optimize, monetize, and scale networks of all kinds.

In 2011, the first organization dedicated to the growth and success of SDN began with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Among its stated missions was to evolve the OpenFlow protocol from its academic roots to a commercially viable substrate for building networks and networking products. Within two years, the ONF’s membership had grown to approximately 100 entities, representing the diverse interest and expectations for SDN. Against this backdrop, many of us were looking at the wider implications of the ideas underlying SDN, and in the process, generalized SDN to include not only OpenFlow but other forms of network programmability as well.

Early on in this process, both Tom Nadeau and Ken Gray realized that SDN was really about general network programmability and the associated interfaces, protocols, data models, and APIs. Using this insight, they helped to organize the SDN Birds of a Feather session at IETF 82, in Taipei, to investigate this more general ...