Introduction to Software Defined Networking
Subhra Priyadarshini Biswal, Sanjeev Patel · 2022
In recent years, we have seen the rapid growth of software-defined networking (SDN) in development and production. In traditional networking systems, fixed dedicated network devices, such as switches, routers are used to control the network traffic. However, nonprogrammable feature, poor network security and performance drawback have created new challenges for future Internet-based information and communication system. The complexity in traditional networking makes the system difficult to reconfigure the network to counter faults, load and error. To overcome these issues, SDN is taking control over the traditional manually configured network to make proper utilization of physical network infrastructure. The aggregation of separate control plane and data plane allows network virtualization and dynamically programmable network configuration to improve the performance. The control plane is responsible for routing the data packet from source to destination. Similarly, the data plane is used for forwarding the packets that is also known as the forwarding plane. It is constructed on centralized network topologies that enable resource management. As a result, the network operator or service provider can manage and directly control their resources and network despite knowing any hardware technologies. It gives high flexibility, automation, service integration functionalities to accommodate innovative network designs. The SDN controller regulates the flow of control over the switches/routers to deploy intelligent networks. The open architecture of SDN broadly includes the infrastructure layer, control layer, and application layer. In this chapter, we focus on the architecture along with the advantage of using SDN networking over traditional networking systems.