Concept of computer networking has completely changed in recent times. Unlike the past the demands and no more confined to basic file sharing or some types of peripheral sharing. It is not even just hosting the company wide applications on some server. Instead most of the enterprises are increasingly turning their heads to advanced computing environments that would nicely cater to all their requirements.
Of course these technologies would require much more computing resources, labor, as well as well chalked out plans to ensure that you get the best results out of the use of advanced technologies.
That exactly is the point where software defined networking or SDN steps in providing users with an exceptional networking architecture. Good news for the webmasters and entrepreneurs is that this networking system is designed with compatibility towards all the standard application programming interfaces or APIs. This helps the developers, designers, and programmers to easily define as well as reconfigure the manner of handling data and other resources within a network.
“The use of an API allows network applications (such as email systems, cloud computing services, or telephony applications) to easily interface and reconfigure the network and its components (such as switches, racks of servers, virtual machines, and other end devices), or pull specific data, based on their particular requirements” according a leading networking expert who was reviewing the functioning of SDN.
SDN however is yet to become a widely accepted concept in the networking industry. Yet it has been in the lime lights of late and especially the major companies dealing with virtualization and cloud computing are giving more and more attention to the latest networking technology. Only a year ago VMware Inc took over Nicira Networks of Silicon Valley for $1.26 billion that was dealing with SDN startup for over five years prior to that.
According to Andrew Harding, the senior director for product marketing for Big Switch; “Networking has remained stuck in the mainframe era for 15 years.” A major SDN networking vendor, he insists that the shift in technology has been from traditional mobile phones to the latest smart phones with the use of APIs. An example is the latest Android ecosystems. He also points out that till date the growth of networking architecture has not matched the growth of protocols.
Use of SDN can help interaction between mobile applications. Till now in the world of mobile application the only possibility was making an API available to other developers to be used in their own application without in any way modifying the first application. An example is the API offered by Google Maps that would allow the applications to layer specific data on the top of Google Maps data.
In SDN environment such applications can reach out to different network switches using some API and will also be able to reconfigure the resources of the networks to suit the needs of the users.
Best achievement of SDN would be the ability to quickly reprogram or provisioning the network.