Software Defined Networking: A Concept and Related Issues

SDN (Software Defined Networking) is the networking architecture that has gained attention of researchers in recent past. It is the future of programmable networks. Traditional networks were very complex and difficult to manage. SDN is going to change this by offering a standard interface (OpenFlow) between the control plane and the networking devices (data plane). Its implementation is fully supported by software so that we can control the behavior of networking devices through programmatic control. This programmatic control provides various new ways to find breakpoints and failures in networking devices. Today SDN has become an important part of networking, so it is important to emulate its behavior. SDN support virtualization which makes it scalable and flexible. Data traffic resides in the data plane. The main function of intelligent controller is to decide the routing policy and manage the traffic in data plane. So effectively SDN emerges as a networking architecture that has the ability to solve all problems those were found in traditional architecture In this paper the authors discussed historical perspective of SDN, languages that support SDN, emulation tools, security issues with SDN and advantages that makes SDN suitable choice for today's network.