evilviper writes:
"According to industry analysts, the reduced sales of traditional switching/routing heavyweights, during this traditionally active time, is due to widespread corporate investments and trials of software defined networking (SDN) equipment, which promises to improve routing efficiency, network management, and dramatically reduce hardware costs. Industry heavyweights like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others are already heavily invested in OpenFlow and SDN, but it seems to be taking hold on a much wider scale, and not just in ultra-massive data centers."
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Uptake of SDN Routing Hurting Conventional Sales
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(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Monday March 17 2014, @09:13AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SlimmPickens on Monday March 17 2014, @09:42AM
You make it sound like they're all booting up Monowall. Openflow is a big deal, every major network vendor is falling over themselves to implement it even though it heavily undermines they're business models.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday March 17 2014, @10:12AM
If the older business model is failing, it's a case of adapt or die.
Now, guess what? It is exactly because the existence and the openness of Linux/BSD and availability of network gear these advances are possible outside the control of network gear vendors. For instance:
Like, how hard would it be [usenix.org] to arrange TCP streaming [wikipedia.org] over multiplepaths [multipath-tcp.org]?
(I remember picking it up on the current green feta site about a year ago. Uh, if you can stand the sight of it, here it is [slashdot.org]: March 22 no less)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by SlimmPickens on Monday March 17 2014, @11:34AM
I fully agree. However what's going on is a lot more significant than a linux machine with hardware accelerated switching, bonding and multipath. We're talking about potentially not even using ethernet and TCP/IP. It is the fundamental shift to programmatically defined networks (originally designed to support virtual infrastructure) with abstracted hardware in the datacentres of those big companies in TFS and all of the network vendors scrambling to get on board. And you're waffling on about bonding and multipath.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 17 2014, @01:25PM
What the hell? I read your opinion, I expressed a complementary - not contradictory - point of view. You really feel like a pissing contest about who's opinion is better or more coherently expressed? On Internet [xkcd.com], no less???
...
...
(oh, my humble apologies sir.
Please allow me to express how happy I am for your corrective intervention...
I mean... such a soaring spirit, raising well above bonding and multipath, seeing... nay, scratch that, groking is the term... the socioeconomic undercurrents that shake and profoundly shape the nowadays society to announce a future that the mediocre mind can't comprehend.
I envy you... how profitable and fulfilling must be your time spent on posting on soylentnews.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Monday March 17 2014, @02:32PM
I'm sorry. I did feel you were attacking me for not supporting Linux. My bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @03:16PM
The "now guess what?" part sounded kind of aggressive.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 17 2014, @03:18PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by mvar on Monday March 17 2014, @07:33PM
Care to give an example?
IMHO the problem with SDN is fully described in the following article:
http://blog.cimicorp.com/?p=1665 [cimicorp.com]
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:51AM
I assume you're asking about the hardware [openflow.org] abstraction [openflow.org]. Think how much fancy mellanox hardware is found in datacenters.
I'm not going to address all the points in the article however I point out that TFS itself is about how sales of traditional equipment is falling due to the widespread adoption of openflow. I think this [informationweek.com] does a good job of explaining what drives adoption:
So basically, SDN is here to stay because traditional networking doesn't handle the dynamic nature of todays datacentres. You can start playing with openflow right now because it's integrated into openqrm and probably all of the other provisioning magic sauce too.
Also, I said above "We're talking about potentially not even using ethernet and TCP/IP." I want to clarify that I said that to try and explain what SDN is. While ethernet and to some extent IP are on the chopping block, the Linux TCP stack is going to be with us for a very long time.
(Score: 1) by mvar on Tuesday March 18 2014, @07:19PM
I'm not familiar with mellanox hardware, i'll have to check it out. I was asking more for an actual example, but the links you provided will do. I have no doubt that SDN is here to stay,my problem lies with the way it is being pushed down our throats as the next big thing while the exact "nuts and bolts" of it remain a mystery for the vast majority of network professionals. Same thing happened with the "cloud" - last time i visited the openstack homepage it was a shitstorm of buzzwords and you'd have to dig for hours in order to find some technical document. As the article i posted says:
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:02AM
I think this software defined networking has major implications for security. Der Spiegel writes [spiegel.de]:
and
So maybe SDN will allow networks to fragment like Linux distros, and combined with security technology and sophisticated traffic handling, SDN might change the game for this kind of malware and hopefully give us a powerful new weapon against spying
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 18 2014, @03:43AM
I've looked and looked, and I can't seem to find anything in SDN or OpenFlow that hasn't been possible for many years through well planned vlans and/or mpls. Yes, a different way to specify it, but not really a new capability.
Does it really bring nothing new to the table?
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:54AM
When you put it like that there's not much difference, but even the lowliest openflow switch has those abilities and has to connect to central controller before it can even do anything. It's a new baseline that is the exact opposite of the old distributed hardware paradigm. The real story though, is that SDN lays a platform for rapid innovation. I think the next ten years will see networking change quite a bit.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:11PM
I'm a bit at a loss still. I have always considered networks to be freely definable through configuration, though I prefer to keep it decentralized.
I can see value in finer control and a standardized configuration, certainly. I guess it's just that the marketing hype leads one to expect something more fundamental and revolutionary than that.