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OPINION
Out-of-band binds
the SDN evolution
By Derek Watson, VP Sales
EMEA & India, Opengear
www.opengear.com
Demand for software defined networking is growing
fast, and although the technology and standards could
fragment, it’s traditional out-of-band management
that provides help with the transition
According to research from Ericsson, by 2020 there will be
50 billion connected devices around the world. Underpinning
this ecosystem will be a plethora of fixed and wireless
networks that require the flexibility to deal with a huge
diversity of use cases, network resiliency demands and
operating models. This Internet of Things is just one use
that software defined networking may well be called upon
to address, but at the moment the technology is still at an
early stage of adoption.
SDN takes the control plane, data plane and
management plane that are traditionally created in
firmware, and implements them in software to enable
programmatic access. The result is that network
administration much more flexible. In essence, the software
now becomes more vital than the proprietary hardware.
Network function virtualisation (NFV) takes many of the
network functions such as routers, firewalls, CDN and many
others and turns them into virtualised building blocks
that can connect to build complex services. On top of this
foundation, networks can build an entire orchestration layer
that can potentially automate network reconfigure based
on factors such as bandwidth demands, security issues,
hardware failure or other triggers.
Working to a standard
While software defined doesn’t necessarily mean open,
there are several powerful groups helping to promote
interoperability and baseline