Carrier-grade Network Management Extensions to the SDN Framework

The concept of software-defined networking (SDN)recently gained huge momentum in the industry, driven mainlyby IT companies interested in datacenter applications. In thispaper, however, we consider SDN applied in the carrier domain,which poses additional requirements on the network architecture,including network management functions. We derive concreterequirements for the use-case of a virtualized multi-provideraccess/aggregation network based on carrier-grade SDN. Wethen provide initial architectural considerations for integrationof network management extensions to the SDN framework asdefined by the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). Architec-tural considerations include definition of the required entities andtheir interactions. Finally, we apply the proposed architecture onthe access/aggregation network use-case, outlining procedures ofhow the network management extensions can enable networkwide and node specific management & configuration