Monday, August 4, 2014

Why SDN is coming to a wireless network near you

We are literally days away from the 7th installment of Wireless Field Day.  I'm really hoping (borderline begging) to hear a couple vendors talk about their Software Defined Network (SDN) solutions.  Now before you hop on the "Shut-up about SDN" bandwagon, here's why I see this as a hot topic right now.

I see SDN changing the way we build networks, and not just in the datacenter.  In the past we built large L2 networks and we eventually hit scaling limitations.  Then we started building routed networks, which solved the scalability problems, and introduced a whole new set of challenges around management of L2 domains, L2 adjacency requirements and troubleshooting routing protocols.

With SDN, the possibility arises where we could have the best of both worlds, and hopefully not the worst of both.  I believe that we will start building underlay L3 networks between our core and access layers, and all the L2 will exist as a dynamic overlay on top.

And since a lot of wireless vendors already have a tunneled overlays for their wireless traffic, the question is not IF SDN will be coming to a wireless network near you, but when, and how will that look.  Just the idea of having VXLAN dynamic overlays for your wireless clients, gets me all excited.  And with VTEP support being baked into silicon for switches, there are a lot of possibilities for new and innovative solutions to emerge.

I hope you will all join in on the Wireless Field Day experience this week, there will be some great discussions, both around SDN and other mobility topic.  All the sessions will be streamed live over at the TechFieldDay.com