Chapter 3 describes the emergence of SDN as an important new networking technology. This chapter describes several forerunners of SDN. These forerunners reflect a number of tentative steps from the mid-1990’s to 2010 that were taken towards what we now call SDN. Some of these technological precursors of SDN represented incremental evolution of legacy mechanisms in an SDN-like direction. Others represented a totally new approach to networking. One such truly novel approach is the work performed at Stanford University on the OpenFlow protocol which was first ratified in 2008. This chapter explains that the most commonly accepted definition of the birth of SDN is the appearance of OpenFlow. SDN has made such a dramatic impact on the networking stage in recent years that there are competing definitions for what constitutes SDN. While later chapters will investigate SDN alternatives in detail, Chapter 3 introduces what we in this book define as the five fundamental traits of SDN : 1) plane separation, 2) a simplified device, 3) centralized control, 4) network automation and virtualization, and 5) openness. These 5 traits will be used later in the book to evaluate how competing SDN alternatives meet the original precepts associated with the SDN movement. In this chapter we delve a bit more deeply into the traits of network virtualization and openness. We provide background on pre-SDN network virtualization and an introduction to the general requirements for network virtualization. An introduction to the benefits and risks of openness and the use of open source software is included.
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