A Survey on Software-Defined Networking

PhD Qualifying Examination


Title: "A Survey on Software-Defined Networking"

by

Mr. Zhiyang SU


Abstract:

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is emerging as an active research field 
in recent years. As the rapid development of cloud computing, data center 
networking and big data, traditional network is ill-suited to meet the 
requirements of today's users and enterprises. In particular, the enormous 
deployed devices which are the critical infrastructure of network make the 
Internet extremely difficult to evolve. Moreover, conventional network 
devices are usually integrated black boxes, which hinder network 
innovations such as new protocol design and testing.

SDN enables programmable network which overcomes the shortcomings of the 
traditional network. It decouples the data-plane and control-plane of the 
switches, making it possible to let these two parts evolve separately. 
Besides, network intelligence and states are logically centralized, 
providing the global visibility of the network. Access control, traffic 
engineering and quality of service can be achieved uniformly across the 
network. Therefore, SDN architecture paves the way for renewing modern 
network.

SDN paradigm is a novel concept, but there are many challenges and open 
problems to solve. In this paper, we survey the state-of-the-art 
approaches on SDN research. The basic idea of SDN and OpenFlow are 
introduced briefly, and then an overview of SDN research evolution is 
provided from historical perspective. We review the literatures of SDN 
optimization, especially on improving the controller performance. The 
applications in different network environments, such as enterprise 
network, data center and wide area network are summarized afterwards. 
Other SDN applications such as routing, measurement and network 
verification are discussed as well. Finally, we conclude the survey and 
present several potential research directions on SDN.


Date:			Tuesday, 7 January 2014

Time:                   4:30pm - 6:30pm

Venue:                  Room 4483
                         lifts 25/26

Committee Members:	Prof. Mounir Hamdi (Supervisor)
 			Dr. Jogesh Muppala (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Kai Chen
 			Dr. Pan Hui


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