SDN and NFVWhat can an NREN offer?Musings from an NREN insider and former network ops guy

FIA Athens, 18 March 2014

Simon Leinensimon.leinen@switch.ch

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• NRENs are very innovative!• As are all of you here; So what does it mean, specifically?• Can we compete with well-funded corporate research? No.• Can we compete with a vibrant startup scene? No.• Can we compete with academia, our own customers? No.

But: We can create spaces for innovationfor these communities.

• There are other ways we can be innovative, but those are not my focus here.

NRENs and Innovation

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HEI

Run reliable, inexpensive fast

LAN

Keep on top of new trends

Save by NFV’ing firewalls, load

balancers etc.?

NREN

Run reliable, inexpensive fast

WAN

Support innovation

Support research(ers)

Researcher

Do exciting and fundable research

Have impact • publications• practice

Work with operators

Vendor

Sell to HEIs (as enterprises),

NREN

Develop new solutions for

broader market

Trial/demo novel products

Stakeholder Concerns

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“Hype” is not a bad thing!It’s just a vehicle for an entire industry to have a debate on (disruptive) innovation options

– “Networking is Cool Again… and that’s good for Cisco”(Padmasree Warrior, Cisco CTO)

To the engineers among us: Put your BS detectors on mute, ignore the overblown promises, enjoy the ride!

The SDN Hype

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/networking-is-cool-againand-thats-good-for-cisco/

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–Practitioners (e.g. HEI IT) look for guidance–Scientists bring their visions into a broader conversation

• Hoping to make an impact (and increase fundability of research)

–Vendors willing to try many new approaches

Hype as an Opportunity for Collaboration

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• Researchers and uni ICT folks in one room – rare occurrence!• Lots of good discussions, but concerns clearly different• Next challenge: constructively add vendors to the mix…

Hype-ortunistic SDN Workshopactual water cooler

Kurt Baumann,our SDN guy

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• The “success” of SDN-as-a-vision creates new inroads for radical approaches to networking– This is an advantage of the loosely-defined “SDN” notion– Both researchers and innovative operators can and should jump on

this opportunity

Hype Broadens Field of View

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• Leverage Commodity CPUs and do software networking– Layer 2 VPN at edge over IP(v6, of course)– using high-performance user-space Snabb Switch– practical benefit: MPLS no longer required in backbone

• CDNFV– Offer short-term VMs to commercial Content Delivery Networks

(CDNs) for usage peaks

• Greenfield IaaS “clouds” – NREN’s next frontier?– SDN for internal networking– SDN for high-capacity site-to-backbone boundary– SDN for “Virtual Private Data Center”– Can build on Open Source implementations, e.g. OpenStack

Neutron

Opportunities at the Fringes

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Common reaction of NRENs faced with new net tech <foo>:

Let’s build a <foo> testbed!⊕We know how to build networks!

⊕By keeping separate, won’t break Production Network

⊖Who’s the customer? Is this what researchers really want?

⊖Should it demonstrate or support <foo>?

⊖Risk of seeing the testbed as and end rather than a means

⊖Path to production?Often limited impact (for virtually unbounded effort)

But if done right, can be really useful! – e.g. PlanetLab, 6net

The Problem With Testbeds