The materials collected here document the experiences of those who have:
- deployed a new or updated an existing networking infrastructure including Software-Defined Networking (SDN) or associated software architectures such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).
- developed or updated networking devices, software, or procedures including support for SDN or associated software architectures such as NFV and Virtual/Virtualized Network Functions (VNF).
While not limited to the topic of deploying SDN, the article 8 Lessons from 20 Years of Hype Cycles still provides lessons that are relevant to the topic of deploying SDN technology.
Training and testing materials for those already using or planning to use SDN or associated software architectures are also provided.
No attempt has been made to extract lessons learned. Instead, original documents are referenced so that the lessons learned can be understood in context. A best-practices document describes actions or practices that are known to produce good outcomes when followed..
Materials listed below come from a wide variety of sources, including conference presentations, research papers, industry studies, commercial provider publications, and other websites. Material was included because of its informational content, rather than to promote interest in SDN and associated software architectures or any particular company. The lessons learned material is organized as follows:
- Networking customers(e.g., government, industry, educational or research organizations)
- Service providers(e.g., Internet Service Providers, internet exchange operators, or wireless carriers)
- Data center and cloud service operators, content providers(e.g., Internet Content Providers or Over-The-Top content providers)
- Commercial providers(i.e., companies that manufacture, sell or support networking devices, functions, software or services)
- Groups(open-source communities, standards development organizations and trade groups)
- Websites, Small-Medium Businesses [SMB], and individuals(researchers and developers)
and the training and testing materials are organized as follows:
- Training Resources(presentations, papers, books, hands-on tutorials, software tools)
- Testing Resources(measurement, methodology, test beds, testing, troubleshooting)
In alphabetical order within each category, each entry provides a source, date of creation and title with a link to the web address of the presentation, paper, video, website, or book.
- Networking customers.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
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Cornell University |
2013 |
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Department of Energy |
2015 |
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Duke University |
2015 |
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2016 |
ConCERNing SDN (review of lessons learned designing, building, and operating an intercampus network) |
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Florida International University |
2015 |
FELIX: FEderated Test-beds for Large-scale Infrastructure eXperiments |
|
Global Environment for Networking Innovation (GENI) |
2014 |
GENI: A federated testbed for innovative network experiments (NOTE: Registration required) |
|
|
2012 |
Openflow@Google (video available here) |
|
|
2013 |
B4: Experience with a Globally-Deployed Software Defined WAN (video available here) |
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2015 |
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2016 |
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2016 |
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2016 |
Lessons Learned from B4, Google's SDN WAN (video available here) |
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Internet2 |
2012 |
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2015 |
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2015 |
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Internet 2 & Open Network Operating System (ONOS) |
2015 |
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2015 |
Internet2 Implements First Large-scale Deployment of ONOS in Live Network |
|
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory |
2015 |
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Microsoft |
2014 |
Real-World SDN: 5 Lessons: |
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Stanford University |
2013 |
Maturing of OpenFlow and Software-Defined Networking through Deployments |
- Service providers.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
|
Accedian Networks |
2016 |
NFV and SDN Lessons from vCPE Deployments (video available here) |
|
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) |
2013 |
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|
2017 |
OpenContrail as SDN controller for NFV infrastructure in AT&T network |
|
CenturyLink, Inc. |
2014 |
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Ciena Corporation |
2020 |
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Deutsche Telekom AG |
2013 |
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Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) |
2018 |
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Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc. |
2014 |
Software-Defined Networking for the Utilities and Energy Sector |
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Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) |
2014 |
Workshop on Prototyping and Deploying Experimental Software Defined Exchanges (SDXs) (in particular, the Workshop Outbrief) |
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Huawei |
2015 |
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2016 |
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Network Operations and Internet SEcurity (NOISE), Princeton |
on-going |
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NTT America - An NTT Communications Company |
2013 |
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Openwave Mobility |
2017 |
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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) |
2022 |
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Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd (REANNZ) & Wellington Internet Exchange (WIX) |
2014 |
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Rothenberg, Chua, et al |
2014 |
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SKT, Viva Kuwait, and ZTE |
2018 |
Migration from Physical to Virtual Network Functions – Best-practices and Lessons Learned |
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Verizon |
2016 |
Lessons Learned: Deploying NFV infrastructure at Verizon (video) Notes on the video |
|
|
2016 |
Verizon Network Infrastructure Planning: SDN-NFV Reference Architecture (technical details) |
- Data center and cloud service, content providers.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
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Alibaba |
2015 |
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Amazon |
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ACMQueue |
2006 |
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High Scalability blog entry |
2007 |
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eBay inc. |
2015 |
SDN Networks at web scale (video) |
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2015 |
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2015 |
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2014 |
Enter the Andromeda zone – Google’s Cloud Platform (video available here) |
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2015 |
A look inside Google’s Data Center Networks (video available here) |
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Intel Corporation |
2014 |
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2016 |
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Microsoft |
2013 |
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2013 |
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2014 |
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2015 |
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2016 |
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2017 |
VFP: A Virtual Switch Platform for Host SDN in the Public Cloud |
|
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2018 |
Azure Accelerated Networking: Smart NICs in the Public Cloud |
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Network Heresy |
2013 |
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Openstack |
2015 |
Building a Secure Multi-tenant Cloud for SaaS Applications (video) |
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PayPal |
2015 |
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VMWare and International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) |
2014 |
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Yahoo! |
2012 |
SDN in Warehouse Scale Datacenters v2.0 (video available here) |
- Commercial providers.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
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Affirmed Networks (a Microsoft company) |
2018 |
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DataYard |
2014 |
Building Mission Critical Cloud Infrastructure: Lessons Learned At Scale |
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Deloitte Development LLC. |
2015 |
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Ericsson |
2014 |
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Nicira Networks |
2012 |
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Cisco, NetApp, & Red Hat |
2014 |
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HP, Intel, & WindRiver |
2013 |
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Metaswitch Networks (A Microsoft company) |
2016 |
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Packet Design |
2015 |
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Red Hat |
2016 |
Lessons Learned from a Large-Scale Telco OSP+SDN Deployment (video available here, CI means "continuous integration")) |
|
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2017 |
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Sandvine |
2015 |
From hardware to NFV: lessons learned in deploying an OpenStack reference at scale (video) |
- Groups.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
|
Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) |
2013 |
Operational Opportunities and Challenges of SDN/NFV Programmable Infrastructure © 2013 by Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. |
|
American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) |
2017 |
Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization |
|
|
2018 |
Cloud Migrations – Lessons Learned (cloud migration case studies from 11 representative Federal government agencies) |
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Cloudify.co |
2018 |
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Groupe Spécial Mobile (GSM) Association (GSMA) |
2020 |
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ICSI and UC Berkeley |
2012 |
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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Future Directions Committee (FDC) |
2014 |
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|
2014 |
A Survey of Software-Defined Networking: Past, Present, and Future of Programmable Networks |
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Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) |
2014 |
Carrier Ethernet and SDN |
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Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Industry Specifications Group (ISG) |
2015 |
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Open Data Center Alliance, Inc. (ODCA) |
2013 |
ODCA Master Usage Model: Software-Defined Networking Rev. 1.0 © 2013 Open Data Center Alliance, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. |
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Open Networking Foundation (ONF) |
2013 |
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|
2013 |
Migration Use Cases and Methods (3 case studies: Google Inter-Datacenter WAN, NTT Provider Edge, and Stanford Campus Network) |
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Optical Internetworking Forum |
2014 |
Additional materials may be available. See the Points of Contact article for links to websites of several open-source communities and standards development organizations.
- Websites, SMB, and individuals.
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Source |
Date |
Title |
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CIO.com, a subsidiary of IDG Enterprise |
2015 |
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Shawn Ennis |
2017 |
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Harvard Business Publishing |
2015 |
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InformationWeek |
2011 |
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Koybayashi, Seetharaman, et al |
2013 |
Maturing of OpenFlow and Software-defined Networking through deployments |
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Latin School of Chicago |
2010 |
Lessons Learned about Consolidation, Virtualization and Disaster Recovery |
|
Levin, Canini, Schmid, et al |
2013 |
Incremental SDN Deployment in Enterprise Networks (video available here) |
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Lin & Hart |
2013 |
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2014 |
|
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Mishra & Dasari |
2014 |
GENI Deployment and Research at US Army Research Laboratory (NOTE: Registration required) |
|
Sagar Nagare |
2018 |
Evaluating Container Based VNF Deployment For Cloud Native NFV |
|
Naqvi |
2015 |
Technical and Non-Technical lessons learned from SDN Implementations |
|
Packet Pushers |
2015 |
Software Defined WAN – Night of Nerdery – Live From New York (podcast featuring Bloomberg, Gap, and Visa panel members) |
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SDN: What Small and Mid-Sized Businesses Need to Know in 2015 |
|
Prayson Pate |
2013-2021 |
A series of articles on LinkedIn i about aspects of NFV and SDN |
|
Pepelnjak |
2015 |
|
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SDxCentral |
2016 |
4 Lessons the Telecom Industry Should Learn From the Enterprise |
|
|
on-going |
SDN Webinars – a series of webinars on current industry deployments of SDN |
|
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center |
2014 |
SDN meets the real-world: implementation benefits and challenges (used by permission) |
- Training Resources.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
|
Acadia Technology Group |
2018 |
|
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Donovan & Prabhu |
2017 |
|
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Goransson & Black |
2014 |
|
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Matt Oswalt blog |
2014-2015 |
SDN Protocols in 5 parts: |
|
|
2015 |
|
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Mininet – GitHub |
2015 |
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Mininet – SIGCOMM |
2014 |
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Nadeau & Gray |
2013 |
SDN: Software Defined Networks. An Authoritative Review of Network Programmability Technologies (book) |
|
NS-3 Network Simulator |
on-going |
|
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ONF |
2014 |
Migration Use Cases and Methods (guidelines, methods and recommendations to migrate network services from a traditional network to SDN) |
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TechTarget.com |
2015 |
|
|
|
2015 |
SDN starter kits remove some do-it-yourself aspects of an SDN deployment |
|
Tittel (Tom's IT Pro) |
2017 |
Best Free Software Defined Networking (SDN) Training and Materials |
- Testing Resources.
|
Source |
Date |
Title |
|
BISmark – Georgia Tech |
2011 |
|
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BISmark – Project BISmark |
2014 |
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Canini, Enzano, et al |
2012 |
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Hongyi |
2014 |
|
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Kurshid, Zou, Zhou, et al |
2013 |
|
|
Microsoft |
2022 |
Troubleshoot the Windows Server Software Defined Networking Stack |
|
ONF |
on-going |
|
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SDN Testing |
2015 |
blog of various open-source and commercial SDN controller test results |
|
University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) |
ongoing |
SDN Test Plans: Certification, Conformance, Interoperability |
|
|
ongoing |
Additional materials may be available from commercial testing service and equipment providers and open-source testing software developers on their respective websites. A partial list includes Accedian Networks, European Advanced Networking Test Center AG, Keysight Technologies, Paragon Active Assurance, Spirent Communications plc, UNH-IOL and Vivai Solutions, Inc.
Other listings of open-source testing software developers are available in the Points of Contact article, here and in Table 1 of this paper.