SDN

This document describes how to provide IPsec-based flow protection (integrity and confidentiality) by means of an Interface to Network Security Function (I2NSF) Controller. It considers two main well-known scenarios in IPsec: gateway-to-gateway and host-to-host. The service described in this document allows the configuration and monitoring of IPsec Security Associations (IPsec SAs) from an I2NSF Controller to one or several flow-based Network Security Functions (NSFs) that rely on IPsec to protect data traffic.

This document focuses on the I2NSF NSF-Facing Interface by providing YANG data models for configuring the IPsec databases, namely Security Policy Database (SPD), Security Association Database (SAD), Peer Authorization Database (PAD), and Internet Key Exchange Version 2 (IKEv2). This allows IPsec SA establishment with minimal intervention by the network administrator. This document defines three YANG modules, but it does not define any new protocol.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) advocates for the separation of the control plane from the data plane in the network nodes and its logical centralization on one or a set of control entities. Most of the network and/or service intelligence is moved to these control entities. Typically, such an entity is seen as a compendium of interacting control functions in a vertical, tightly integrated fashion. The relocation of the control functions from a number of distributed network nodes to a logical central entity conceptually places together a number of control capabilities with different purposes. As a consequence, the existing solutions do not provide a clear separation between transport control and services that rely upon transport capabilities.

This document describes an approach called Cooperating Layered Architecture for Software-Defined Networking (CLAS), wherein the control functions associated with transport are differentiated from those related to services in such a way that they can be provided and maintained independently and can follow their own evolution path.

This document defines terminology for benchmarking a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controller's control-plane performance. It extends the terminology already defined in RFC 7426 for the purpose of benchmarking SDN Controllers. The terms provided in this document help to benchmark an SDN Controller's performance independently of the controller's supported protocols and/or network services.

This document defines methodologies for benchmarking the control-plane performance of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) Controllers. The SDN Controller is a core component in the SDN architecture that controls the behavior of the network. SDN Controllers have been implemented with many varying designs in order to achieve their intended network functionality. Hence, the authors of this document have taken the approach of considering an SDN Controller to be a black box, defining the methodology in a manner that is agnostic to protocols and network services supported by controllers. This document provides a method for measuring the performance of all controller implementations.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) refers to a new approach for network programmability, that is, the capacity to initialize, control, change, and manage network behavior dynamically via open interfaces. SDN emphasizes the role of software in running networks through the introduction of an abstraction for the data forwarding plane and, by doing so, separates it from the control plane. This separation allows faster innovation cycles at both planes as experience has already shown. However, there is increasing confusion as to what exactly SDN is, what the layer structure is in an SDN architecture, and how layers interface with each other. This document, a product of the IRTF Software-Defined Networking Research Group (SDNRG), addresses these questions and provides a concise reference for the SDN research community based on relevant peer-reviewed literature, the RFC series, and relevant documents by other standards organizations.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has been one of the major buzz words of the networking industry for the past couple of years. And yet, no clear definition of what SDN actually covers has been broadly admitted so far. This document aims to clarify the SDN landscape by providing a perspective on requirements, issues, and other considerations about SDN, as seen from within a service provider environment.

It is not meant to endlessly discuss what SDN truly means but rather to suggest a functional taxonomy of the techniques that can be used under an SDN umbrella and to elaborate on the various pending issues the combined activation of such techniques inevitably raises. As such, a definition of SDN is only mentioned for the sake of clarification.