What is Software Defined Networking (SDN)?


SDN technology is a network management technique that allows for dynamic, programmatically efficient network setup to increase network performance and monitoring, making it more like cloud computing than traditional network administration.

SDN was created to solve the problem that old networks' static design is decentralized and difficult, but today's networks demand more flexibility and ease of troubleshooting. By decoupling the forwarding of network packets (data plane) from the routing process, SDN tries to consolidate network intelligence in a single network component (control plane).

The control plane is made up of one or more controllers, which are considered the brain of the SDN network and contain all of the network's intelligence. The fundamental difficulty with SDN is that intelligent centralization has its own downsides in terms of security, scalability, and flexibility.

Operation Technology SDN

Operational Technology (OT) Software Defined Networking is a type of SDN technology that is now available for industrial control applications that require highly quick failover (SDN). OT SDN technology is a method of managing network access control and Ethernet packet delivery for critical infrastructure networks using environmentally hardened hardware. OT SDN removes control plane administration from switches, concentrating it in the flow controller and using SDN as the switch's underlying control plane.

OpenFlow Protocol

The transfer is simplified by removing the old control plane and centralizing control plane management. OpenFlow is a common control plane standard used in OT SDN, making it interoperable with other SDN solutions. The difference is that OpenFlow is the only control plane in the switch, and the switch retains through power cycles, and all flows and redundancy are proactively traffic-engineered so the switches can perform the forwarding they are configured to do with or without telecommunications. Industrial networks benefit from OT SDN in terms of performance, cybersecurity, and situational awareness.

Network control and forwarding operations are decoupled in SDN designs, allowing network control to be directly programmable and the underlying infrastructure to be distinct from applications and network services.

SDN technology can make use of the OpenFlow protocol.

  • Because network control is separated from forwarding functions, it is directly programmable.

  • Administrators can dynamically modify network-wide traffic flow to meet changing demands by abstracting control from forwarding.

  • Software-based SDN controllers that retain a global view of the network are (logically) centralized in network intelligence which appears to applications and policy engines as a single, logical switch.

SDN allows network administrators to swiftly setup, manage, protect, and optimize network resources using dynamic, automated SDN programs that they may create themselves because the programs do not rely on proprietary software.

SDN is vendor-neutral and based on open standards, which simplifies network design and management by allowing SDN controllers to give instructions instead of numerous vendor-specific devices and protocols.

Updated on: 28-Oct-2021

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