Network Programmability and Automation
Chapter 1:Network Industry Trends
The Rise of Software Defined Networking
Martin Casado
General Partner and Venture Capitalist
Andreesen Horowitz
Sr VP and GM
Networking and Security
VMWare
OpenFlow
Nicira
First major protocol of SDN
Decoupling of Network Devices' control and data plane
control plane = brains of a network device
data plane = hardware or application specific integrated circuits
Control plane is responsible for the traffic that are directed to the router e.g routing protocols, VTP, Spanning Tree Protocol.
Data Plane or the Forwarding Plane is responsible for the actual movement of traffic, e.g Access-Lists, prefiix Lists, CEF
low-leve protocol used to influence the flow of the traffic, provides interface with the hardware table-RIB or FIB, for example traffic to destination should egress port 48)
was not intended to interact with management protocols such as snmp
openflow use more than the destination addresses as conventional protocols used. thus providing granularity than for example, PBR
one of the goal of openflow is vendor neutrality.
OpenFlow is not the first protocol to decouple the Data Plane and the Control plane, but it is the one that started the SDN revoulution
Forwarding and Control Element Separation(ForCES)
Active Networks
Routing Control Platform
Path Computation Element
Why OpenFlow?
Martin Casado at national government
he was able to program and manipulate the computers and servers as he needed
for network, it is impossible because each network device is "closed" - lock from installing third party application and only had CLI
modern ways of managing large numbers of devices for configuration management and analysis
hypervisor managers
IP PBXs
PowerShells
DevOps Tools
was it possible to redirect traffic based on application?
Did network devices have an API?
was there as sinlge point of communication to the network
What Is Software Defined Networking?
OpenFlow
Network Functions Virtualization
Virtual switching
Device APIs
Network automation
Bare-metal switching
Data center network fabrics
SD-WAN
Controller networking
major benefits:
vendor independence from NOS and physical network device
When OpenFlow is used, you do gain the benefit to getting more granular with how traffic traverses the network,
Big Switch Networks, HP, and NEC)
Refers to taking functions traditionally deployed from hardware into software
VMs operate as: routers, firewalls, load balancers, IDS/IPS, VPN, application firewalls and other service
VMWare Standard Switch
VMWare Distributed Switch
CIsco Nexus 1000v
Cisco Application Virtual Switch
Open vSwitch
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