This whitepaper provides a detailed analysis of the applications and requirements of software-defined networking. The whitepaper helps to understand how SDN is important to enable network administrators and cloud computing to respond fast to shifting business requirements through a centralized control mode. This whitepaper covers all the aspects related to network technologies which are designed to make the network more agile and flexible to support the storage infrastructure and centralized server. The whitepaper also helps to understand various applications of SDN in cloud computing and mobile networks. It covers the requirement of SDN to provide flexible control over the network.

This whitepaper provides a detailed analysis of the applications and requirements of software-defined networking. The whitepaper helps to understand how SDN is important to enable network administrators and cloud computing to respond fast to shifting business requirements through a centralized control mode. This whitepaper covers all the aspects related to network technologies which are designed to make the network more agile and flexible to support the storage infrastructure and centralized server. The whitepaper also helps to understand various applications of SDN in cloud computing and mobile networks. It covers the requirement of SDN to provide flexible control over the network.

What is software-defined networking?

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is generally defined as an architecture that aims in making networks responsive and flexible. It is also an approach to use the open protocols in order to apply the software control at the boundaries of the networks and thus to access network routers and switches. Hence, the ultimate goal of SDN is to improve the network control thus by enabling enterprises and service providers so as to respond quickly to the changing business requirements in the day to day lives.

So, let us look at some of the benefits of Software Defined Networking:

• Automated load balancing
• On-Demanding Provisioning
• Simplified physical infrastructure
• The supervisor can modify any network to switch’s the rule when necessary thus, by prioritizing, deprioritizing specific type of packets with a gritty level of control and security
• Capability to measure networking resources in lockstep with data and application requirements
• Network management and an end to end visibility
• Contributes to the development of software-defined wide area network technology

How do SDN works?

Software-defined networking includes various types of technologies which generally includes automation, functional separation and network virtualization. Initially, the software-defined network is fully focused on the separation of the control plane from the data plane. Whereas, the control plane makes decisions about how the packets should flow through the defined network. And the data plane moves the packets from place to place.

The SDN uses an operational mode which is called as adaptive network where a switch receives a route request to a controller. Then the visualization aspect comes into picture which is a logical separation of the network on the top of a physical network. And for the users, they can easily implement an end to end overlay in order to abstract the segment network traffic and basic network.

Challenges faced with Software-defined networking:

• Security: Security issues are both concern and a benefit with Software Defined Technology. There may be a single point failure for a centralized SDN if in case it is targeted by the cyber attacker it can be harmful to the network.
• No proven definition: Another major issue faced by Software-Defined Networking is that a number of vendors in the market offer several approaches to Software Defined Networking which generally ranges from the hardware-centric model and visualization platforms to controller-less methods.
• Difficult process: The legacy networking infrastructure is a combination of vendor’s solution, protocol and platform’s solutions which helps in achieving an integrated network system a difficult task for a number of organizations.

Software-defined networking provides a centralized and programmable network which usually consists of:

• Software

SDN controller is the main unit of the network which helps to get a centralized sight of the whole network.

• Southbound API’s

Southbound APIs helps in transmitting data to the routers and the switches in the network.

• Northbound API’s

Northbound APIs helps to interconnect with applications and thus deploy services.

Advantages of SDN:

• Centralization: Software-defined networking helps in a greater way to provide a centralized view of the organization's overall network, where it has made it easier to simplify enterprise management and another provisioning. It helps to speed up the service delivery and provides a more agile environment for both virtual and physical network provisioning from a single central location.
• Less Capital Expenditure: Therefore, by the implementation of software-defined networking it usually helps to easily optimize the existing work devices by making the existing hardware to be repurposed to follow the instructions of the software-defined networking controller in a more cost-effective way.
• Delivery of Content: Control over data traffic is the biggest advantage of the software-defined network. It helps in increase in ability to direct and automate the data traffic and makes implementing of quality services. Helping users to get a seamless experience for streaming high-quality audio and video.
• Management: Software-defined networks help and support to manage physical and virtual switches and equipment of network from a single centralized controller, it is something that cannot be done by using a simple network management portal.

Hence, Software-defined networking is the simplification and centralization of enterprise business network management. As is mentioned above the common advantage for software-defined networking are:

• Agility
• Its ability to create a policy-driven network supervision
• Implementation of network automation

But among all the greatest one is to allow the creation of a framework in order to support more data-intensive applications, for example, big data and visualization. Network Intelligence is a logically centralized programmable software-defined networking controllers. When it is employed in software, such controllers maintain an intelligible view of the networking domain. Software-defined network looks like a single logical switch.