DailyPost 1807
SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING
Networking is at the core of the communication intensive world; primarily in operations. In today’s world there is operations in everything. What networks can do us, we have all realized in the COVID-19 infected world, a stable and easily controllable network is something which we all desire. One way to achieve this goal is Software Defined Networking, SDN, which organizations are adopting in place of the traditional networks. The difference with the traditional data center environments is also very stark.” In a traditional environment, a router or switch – whether in the cloud or physically in data center – will only be aware of the status of network devices adjacent to it.”
SDN takes away the brain out the network devices, which now control only the flow of data. With the onset of SDN, the intelligence of the network becomes centralized and it is prolific too; you gain complete control of the network; you can view and control everything. In very simple terms, the network logic is decoupled form the network devices performing such functions, for ex. routers , which are designed to control the movement of information in the network in which they function. The distinctive feature of SDN is that the controllers are overlaid on the network hardware. It can be done on cloud and also on premises. From a technical point of view, the network plane and forwarding plane are separated from the data plane.
In this manner, SDN helps enable the organization to program network control directly. There are three main components of SDN; applications that relay information about the network, controllers that communicate with the applications, the controllers are the load balancers and the networking devices that receive instructions. OpenFlow a programmable networking protocol is used in SDN. The Open Networking Foundation, ONF, works in the area of standardizing the protocols. The SDN works very well with NFV (Network functions virtualization). ”It helps in refining the process of controlling data packet routing through a centralized server, improving visibility and control.”
Thus the SDN is immensely useful in providing; the ease of network control, agility and the ability to dynamically use load balancing, helps in gaining greater granularity of control over security, ease of configuration and simplified network design and operation. Microsegmentation can be used for the purposes of reducing complexity and also helps in establishing consistency across any network architecture. SDN with virtual machines and virtualization of networks, helps the service providers to achieve the next level of efficiencies. The four primary types of SDN are; Open SDN, API SDN, Overly Model SDN and Hybrid Model SDN. On the risk side, as it is centralized, there is the potential for a single point of failure. This can be mitigated by ”implementing controller redundancy on the network with automatic fail-over.”
SDN BRINGS IN A LEVEL OF CONTROL AND FLEXIBILITY ESSENTIAL FOR TODAY’S NETWORKS.
Sanjay Sahay