What is SDN? If you follow any number of news feeds or vendor accounts on Twitter, you've no doubt noticed the term "software-defined networking" or SDN popping up more and more lately. Depending on whom you believe, SDN is either the most important industry revolution since Ethernet or merely the latest marketing buzzword (the truth, of course, probably falls somewhere in between). Few people from either camp, however, take the time to explain what SDN actually means. This is chiefly because the term is so new and different parties have been stretching it to encompass varying definitions which serve their own agendas. The phrase "software-defined networking" only became popular over roughly the past eighteen months or so. So what the hell is it? Before we can appreciate the concept of SDN, we must first examine how current networks function. Each of the many processes of a router or switch can be assigned to one of three conceptual planes of operatio...
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