Software-Defined Networking: A Perspective from within a Service Provider Environment
RFC 7149
| Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(March 2014; No errata)
Was draft-sin-sdnrg-sdn-approach (individual)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2018-12-20 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
| Reviews | |||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | Adrian Farrel | ||
| Shepherd write-up | Show (last changed 2013-10-07) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 7149 (Informational) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Adrian Farrel | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
| IANA | IANA review state | Version Changed - Review Needed | |
| IANA action state | No IANA Actions | ||
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) M. Boucadair
Request for Comments: 7149 C. Jacquenet
Category: Informational France Telecom
ISSN: 2070-1721 March 2014
Software-Defined Networking: A Perspective from
within a Service Provider Environment
Abstract
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been one of the major buzz
words of the networking industry for the past couple of years. And
yet, no clear definition of what SDN actually covers has been broadly
admitted so far. This document aims to clarify the SDN landscape by
providing a perspective on requirements, issues, and other
considerations about SDN, as seen from within a service provider
environment.
It is not meant to endlessly discuss what SDN truly means but rather
to suggest a functional taxonomy of the techniques that can be used
under an SDN umbrella and to elaborate on the various pending issues
the combined activation of such techniques inevitably raises. As
such, a definition of SDN is only mentioned for the sake of
clarification.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7149.
Boucadair & Jacquenet Informational [Page 1]
RFC 7149 On SDN March 2014
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3
2. Introducing Software-Defined Networking .........................4
2.1. A Tautology? ...............................................4
2.2. On Flexibility .............................................4
2.3. A Tentative Definition .....................................5
2.4. Functional Metadomains .....................................6
3. Reality Check ...................................................6
3.1. Remember the Past ..........................................7
3.2. Be Pragmatic ...............................................8
3.3. Measure Experience against Expectations ....................8
3.4. Design Carefully ...........................................9
3.5. On OpenFlow ................................................9
3.6. Non-goals .................................................10
4. Discussion .....................................................11
4.1. Implications of Full Automation ...........................11
4.2. Bootstrapping an SDN ......................................12
4.3. Operating an SDN ..........................................14
4.4. The Intelligence Resides in the PDP .......................15
4.5. Simplicity and Adaptability vs. Complexity ................16
4.6. Performance and Scalability ...............................16
4.7. Risk Assessment ...........................................17
5. Security Considerations ........................................17
6. Acknowledgements ...............................................18
7. Informative References .........................................18
Boucadair & Jacquenet Informational [Page 2]
RFC 7149 On SDN March 2014
1. Introduction
The Internet has become the federative network that supports a wide
range of service offerings. The delivery of network services such as
IP VPNs assumes the combined activation of various capabilities that
include (but are not necessarily limited to) forwarding and routing
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