Vint Cerf: SDN Is a Model For a Better Internet 69
Nerval's Lobster writes "Vint Cerf, one of the 'founders of the Internet,' told an audience April 16 that if he could do it all over again, he would construct the Internet in the mold of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Cerf, who co-designed the TCP/IP protocol suite with Bob Kahn, said that he admired how SDN separates the data plane from the control plane, which allows the network to be controlled via software from an external server. One of the hazards of conjoining the two, he added, was the attack risk. 'I wish we had done [the separation] in the Internet design, but we didn't,' Cerf told the audience for his keynote address at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, Calif. 'In a very interesting way you have an opportunity to reinvent this whole notion of networking.'"
SDN and QoS (Score:5, Interesting)
One big problem with SDN APIs including OpenFlow is that they ignore Layer 2 Quality of Service.
For example, there is no way to implement Ethernet Data Center Bridging (DCB) or Audio Video Bridging (AVB) with OpenFlow because there is no feedback about Ethernet frame buffer fullness between the data plane and the control frame.
It would not be rocket science to provide this awareness to the control plane, but I hope someone with the spare time can look into this!
As more time-sensitive flows such as audio and video (and drop-sensitive flows like FCoE) move onto Ethernet and IP, QoS will become more important!