Software-Defined Networks for Future Networks and Services: Main Technical Challenges and Business Implications

In 2013, the IEEE Future Directions Committee (FDC) formed an SDN work group to explore the amount of interest in forming an IEEE Software-Defined Network (SDN) Community. To this end, a Workshop on "SDN for Future Networks and Services" (SDN4FNS'13) was organized in Trento, Italy (Nov. 11th-13th 2013). Following the results of the workshop, in this paper, we have further analyzed scenarios, prior-art, state of standardization, and further discussed the main technical challenges and socio-economic aspects of SDN and virtualization in future networks and services. A number of research and development directions have been identified in this white paper, along with a comprehensive analysis of the technical feasibility and business availability of those fundamental technologies. A radical industry transition towards the "economy of information through softwarization" is expected in the near future

Edge-to-edge virtualization and orchestration in heterogeneous transport networks

Nowadays, Internet services demand for the mobilization of computing and storage resources located in proximity of the final users, and for the support of an agile and programmable network infrastructure. This calls for a holistic vision in which control, management, and optimization of both computing and networking resources are combined, resulting in a progressive blur of the capabilities of the latter towards the edges of the transport segment. However, due to its multi-provider nature, the Internet itself is the main obstacle to this change. In such a context, Network Virtualization (NV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions can enable business opportunities and provide technical benefits for the operators managing the different domains of a transport infrastructure. In this paper we discuss in detail the technical challenges and outline potential architectural approaches exploiting the above mentioned solutions to provide edge-to-edge virtualization, abstraction, control, and optimization of heterogeneous transport networks composed of both packet- and circuit- switched technologies