A survey on software defined network

PhD Qualifying Examination


Title: "A survey on software defined network"

by

Mr. Shiyao MA


Abstract:

The traditional TCP/IP network architecture does serve its purpose for 
communication. Nevertheless, many realistic problems could not be envisioned 
when the architecture was first designed. Today, enterprises, carriers, and 
other service providers are all facing an ordeal: the network is becoming the 
most complex and complicated system ever. The make-do-and-amend strategy has 
made the network architecture ill-suited to management, extension, and 
innovation.

Software defined networking (SDN) has recently been proposed to address the 
above issues. Unlike conventional L2/L3 devices, where the control logic is 
mingled with data forwarding, SDN decouples them apart. In general, SDN 
abstracts three conceptual entities, data plane, control plane, and application 
plane. Data plane consists of network elements, such as switches and routers. 
Control plane is logically the center where network status is stored, and from 
it control commands are issued to the data plane. Network applications, such as 
traffic engineering, load balancer and firewall, consult the control plane for 
network status and rely on the control plane to alter the network. Based on its 
decoupled network abstraction, SDN strives to increase the flexibility and 
programmability of the network. Therefore, network management can be automated, 
security policy can be enforced without hassle and network traffic can be 
controlled at finer granularity.

In this survey, we first present an overview of SDN. We then procceed to 
analyze the data, control and application plane of SDN in detail. Critical 
issues of each plane will be discussed respectively. Finally, we discuss some 
future concerns of SDN before we conclude this survey.


Date:			Monday, 2 February 2015

Time:                  	3:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:                  Room 3494
                         Lifts 25/26

Committee Members:	Prof. Bo Li (Supervisor)
 			Dr. Lei Chen (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Kai Chen
 			Dr. Lin Gu


**** ALL are Welcome ****