Implementation experience in multi-domain SDN: Challenges, consolidation and future directions

Abstract Network architectures compliant with the Software Defined Networking (SDN) design paradigm, are expected to provide extreme flexibility for service orientation and allow for efficient use of network resources of cloud systems. Nevertheless, radical reconsidering and removal of boundaries set out when studying multi-domain communications are required, in order to unleash the hidden potential of SDN and provide a “holistic” network view. Although many domain-specific efforts have been proposed in the literature and indeed they gain a lot of industrial attention, real multi-domain SDN implementations over converged wireless-optical networks are just starting to disclose. In this work we present an open end-to-end multi-domain SDN system, while focusing on the necessary abstractions and virtualization techniques to integrate virtual wireless and optical resources. With the proposed system, called CONTENT, we shed light in the field of wireless-optical network virtualization from an end-to-end perspective. We present the architecture and the integrated testbed that realize the envisioned system. Evaluation results are provided and implementation experience is reported using the integrated solution. The way SDN methodologies and techniques can be used to support NFV concepts in end-to-end fashion are also presented.