Chapter 3

Genesis of SDN

Abstract

Chapter 3 describes the emergence of SDN as an important new networking technology. This chapter describes several forerunners of SDN. These forerunners reflect a number of tentative steps from the mid-1990s to 2010 that were taken toward what we now call SDN. Some of these technological precursors of SDN represented incremental evolution of legacy mechanisms in an SDN-like direction. Others represented a totally new approach to networking. One such truly novel approach is the work performed at Stanford University on the OpenFlow protocol which was first ratified in 2008. This chapter explains that the most commonly accepted definition of the birth of SDN is the appearance of OpenFlow. SDN has made such a ...

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