SP Uptake of SDN Strongest in Data Centers through 2016

ACG Projects Purchases of SDN Products by Service Providers for Use in Live Deployments Will Reach $15.6 Billion by 2018

The importance of SDN in service providers’ networks will grow, supporting cloud-based application and IT services data centers, advanced WAN IP and multilayer transport services. Adoption of the SDN model of abstracted and logically centralized control plane and network control applications will be extensive, influencing all major domains of SPs’ network infrastructures.

Service providers will deploy not only SDN software (including SDN controllers and control applications) but also evolve their underlying network infrastructures to use platforms enhanced to work with higher layer SDN controls in key network domains. SDN enabled infrastructure will be purchased in multiple equipment categories, including data center switches and routers, edge and core IP routers, carrier Ethernet switches and metro and core optical networking platforms. Adoption will occur along two dimensions: a portion of the SDN enabled equipment will be used directly in active developments, trials and deployments of SDN driven offerings. The percentage of total purchases used in live SDN deployments by SPs will increase. Beyond this percentage, there will be an additional portion purchased with the ability to be used in SDN deployments but whose functions are not turned on as of the time of purchase (they are being purchased so the SP will be ready to use SDN functionality at the appropriate time in their service development life cycles). Together, these two categories define the total opportunity at stake for SDN enabled infrastructures in SP markets.

Total purchases of SDN products by service providers for use in live SDN deployments worldwide will be $15.6 billion annually by 2018 and uptake will occur in essentially equal amounts (in total dollar terms) in the four principal domains of SP networking: data center, edge, metro and core. SDN software will comprise approximately 20% of this total with service control applications comprising a larger portion (margin of 60–40%) of the overall software spend by 2018 than SDN controllers. Both types of SDN software will be a crucial part of the SDN deployments though the value of control applications being embedded into the solutions will increase as deployments expand. At the current time and through 2016, data centers will be the most active domain for live deployments, representing over 50% of the total in the market in that period. However, by 2018 the importance of the other three domains will have increased, and deployment volumes will be of approximately equal size across them.

Revenue-generating services that SDN will enhance include cloud-based application and IT services, media and entertainment delivery, machine-to-machine and Internet of things (IoT) applications, and managed network services of multiple types. Most important, use cases will include service deployment automation, workload placement optimization, application-driven traffic steering, custom path generation, dynamic SLA assurance, and development of custom and differentiated services.

For additional information about ACG’s SP SDN Forecast contact Karen Grenier, kgrenier@acgresearch.net or 408-200-0967.

Paul Parker-Johnson
pparkerjohnson@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch.net

The Economics of Cisco’s nLight Multilayer Control Plane Architecture

Networks are becoming more difficult to plan and optimize because of high traffic growth, volatile traffic patterns, changes in network architecture and more stringent service level agreements. Because the IP and optical control planes are not integrated, service providers’ networks are always over-engineered and underutilized with 50–75 percent of the network capacity deployed for network resiliency, not for passing traffic. A more economically efficient and effective network resiliency solution is needed.

Cisco has addressed this problem with nLight: a multilayer routing and optimization architecture that focuses on IP and DWDM integration, increasing network agility and flexibility while improving network utilization. ACG Research compared the nLight approach to protection and restoration to the widely used 1+1 optical protection scheme. Click here to download the TCO.

For more on the topic, listen to Eve Griliches and Ron Johnson, Cisco, discuss packet optical convergence and Cisco nLight technology.

For more information about ACG Research's business case analysis services, contact sales@acgresearch.net.

Michael Kennedy

mkennedy@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch

Ericsson Smart Services Router: Scaling the Control Plane

Network bandwidth usage is growing at annual rates of 60 percent or more because of the rapid adoption of video and cloud services. Control plane traffic is increasing even more quickly as the Internet moves from serving fixed locations and fairly static information sources to one characterized by personalized, media-rich applications (app), and mobile services. Service providers that are already concerned with data plane scalability must also add control plane scalability to their list of network planning issues.

ACG Research conducted an analysis of the sources of growth in control plane traffic: increases in end-user connections, device types, apps, app policy and control requirements, and mobility management requirements.

This study projects data and control plane traffic growth at a typical packet core node and analyzes the scalability of the SSR 8020 IP service delivery platform and of a competing service router when configured to serve this traffic growth. The study finds that the SSR 8020 has lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by 66 percent and higher scalability by two to more than three times that of the competitor’s service router.

Click here to go to ACG's website to download the TCO.

For more information about ACG Research's business case analysis services, click here.

Michael Kennedy
mkennedy@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch

The Top Five Security Considerations for Software Defined Networks

While there is a lot of interest in the potential of Software Defined Networks, there are only a handful of actual production networks out there right now. Why? One reason is because of the security risks associated with deploying the existing technology. The following are the top five areas that need to be addressed to improve the security of this new architecture:

Secure the Controller: By separating the control and management plane from the data plane, the “brains” of the network are centralized, which theoretically enables you to make changes to improve the speed, efficiency and potentially security of your network, with just a few clicks. Because the controllers that manage the network can be used to do anything, it also means securing them is of paramount concern.

Depending to whom you talk to, “putting all your eggs in one basket” so to speak, with all the brains of the network in the Controller can be seen as bad, representing a big target and vulnerability, or good, enabling the concentration of protection efforts on one thing. (Note, it may not be that dissimilar to DNS servers today, which are hugely disruptive if taken down or compromised; however, most network administrators feel fairly comfortable in their ability to protect the DNS servers in their network.)

Protect the Controller: Protecting the availability of the controller is also critical. Commercial solutions must easily enable redundancy to reduce the impact a compromise on one controller can have on the entire network.

Establish Trust Between the Controller and the Applications and Devices: Ensuring the integrity of anything that communicates with the controller is a critical first step in making sure the network is running as it should. There must be strong, mutual authentication for the applications that run on it, as well as the switches, routers and servers it controls. Also the communications channel needs to be secure to prevent attacks, such as man-in-the-middle.

Create Robust Policy Framework: Checks and balances are needed to ensure the network is operating as it should. When changes to the controller are made, there needs to be a framework in place to ensure they are in line with corporate policies and don’t open up security risks or knock the organization out of compliance.

Forensics and Remediation: Just as in any network, understanding what is going on or what happened is vital to being able to make changes that strengthen your overall security posture and better protect you from future threats.

Most likely these risks will be addressed as the technology matures and more commercial offerings are made available to the market, but it’s important to keep in mind what needs to happen before wide-scale, production deployments can be considered.

Sarah will be speaking at “What Every Business Executive and Investor Needs to Know about SDN and OpenFlow”

Sarah Sorensen

ssorensen@acgresearch.net

www.acgresearch

Scaling the Router Control Plane

As network usage moves to cloud, personal and mobile services the quantity of network signaling—control plane—traffic is exploding. Router vendors and network architects who are already struggling to meet the bandwidth requirements of video traffic must add control plane scalability to the network design equation.

The rapid increase in network signaling traffic is driven by the move from an Internet that served fixed locations and fairly static information sources to one where users demand personalized, socially-inclusive, media-rich apps, and mobile devices. Growth in fixed and mobile broadband subscribers, the number and type of network devices, and applications are all fundamental drivers of increase control plane signaling traffic. They combine to produce a multiplier effect that makes control plane traffic grow faster than data plane traffic.

Read the entire article at FierceTelecom.

Michael Kennedy
mkennedy@acgresearch.net
www.acgresearch.net