Published via Inbox: 2013-05-13 20:12:36
Vint Cerf is the father of the internet, so its worth listening to what he thinks the next generation of networking might enable. For him software-defined networking might fix some design flaws.
[T}he OpenFlow protocol changes the destination address from a physical port to a table entry, which enables a new type of networking. One that might be more suited to the collaborative web we’re building today.Content based routing also could be an option — something we’ve covered at our Structure conference in 2011.
Lots of Twitters-like Services Leveraging Multicast
In content based routing you take the content of a packet and use that to determine what to do with it. It turns routing into something that’s closer to the way Twitter works as opposed to how the U.S. Postal System does. For example you would look at the content of a packet and route it to people who said they want to receive that information. It becomes multi-cast instead of a one-to-one connection.
Running Network Traffic Seamlessly Over Wireless and Wireline At The Same Time
He pointed out that when the internet was developed researchers built different networks depending on the medium, so a mobile network and a wireline network today don’t look the same to software running over those networks. You can’t run traffic seamlessly across both at the same time. With SDN you could.
My Two Cents
Two important observations from this article featuring the vision of Dr. Vint Cerf:
1. Seeing the advent of lots of Twitter-like Services leveraging Multicast would be exciting. I would love to see the choke-hold of Twitter taken away (there can't be just one). Just as important, Dr. Cerf sees a huge opportunity to deliver content based routing. An opt in service that delivers content of a packet to the people who want to receive that information. Leveraging multicast to do this is much more efficient on so many levels than by a one to one connection. In this architecture, you can finally separate the control plane from the data plan (virtually or in software finally). Huge choke-point removed.
2. If Dr. Cerf's vision of software defined networking comes to fruition, then we may actually see a future where one network can deliver to mobile and wireline network simultaneously. Now just that would be an exciting fulfillment of software defined networking.
