Two major emerging network trends, Software-defined networking (SDN) and the Internet of Things (IoT), are destined to intersect, with one perhaps dependent on the other.
Experts say that SDN, through its ability to intelligently route traffic and use underutilised network resources, will make it much easier to prepare for the data onslaught of IoT. SDNs will eliminate bottlenecks and induce efficiencies to help the data generated by IoT to be processed without placing a larger strain on the network.
Indeed, Cisco, which is particularly bullish on IoT, says its Application Centric Infrastructure version of SDN, as well as its InterCloud multi-cloud provider interface, is the foundational underpinning of its Internet of Everything strategy.
Major driver
Stu Bailey, founder and CTO at Infoblox, a maker of network control products, says, “The Internet of Things is going to be a major driver for SDN. If you just have a lot of things, then the most important inhibitor is complexity. The only material that we have to combat an increasing complexity in IT systems is software. There won’t be an Internet of Things without software-defined networks.”
Others are not willing to go quite that far, but admit SDN will be a key enabler. “There’s not a dependency, but SDN can be beneficial for IoT,” says Joe Byrne, head of product strategy for the Digital Networking Group of Freescale Semiconductor, a maker of microcontrollers and digital network processors.
For service providers, however, SDN and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) will be vital to participating in the IoT opportunity, says Dennis Ward, IoT analyst at ACG Research. “They will have to enhance their service delivery infrastructures to become more agile,” Ward says. “Bringing SDN/NFV capabilities to the solutions will help get them there.”
Some specific SDN capabilities will be particularly useful, Ward says, including service chaining, dynamic load management and bandwidth calendaring.
Service chaining makes it possible to sequence application-specific processing procedures to a given client’s job. Service chaining will enable an operator to provision, for example, virtual security features like VPNs, firewalls and authentication, and set policy tolerances for performance in line with a given subscriber’s entitlements, Ward says.
“This will ease the provisioning and service management processes as IoT device subscriptions start to increase,” he says.
Load management
Dynamic load management will enable operators to monitor and orchestrate bandwidth changes automatically given the overall load of the network. This will be ideal for global IoT providers preparing for the expected exponential increase in devices and data, Ward says.
Bandwidth calendaring will allow an operator to schedule when and how much traffic a customer or application will need at a specific time. This is applicable to IoT services since there are devices that only send data periodically at prescribed times, Ward explains.
The software essence of SDN is the enabler, says Infoblox’s Bailey.
“How do you deploy a very complex (system) with less people, not more, in terms of operations?” Bailey asks. “People talk about DevOps; SDN points to no ops. While there may be several technical hurdles to get there, the history of software has shown us that ultimately, as the software industry focuses, they can deploy that level of automation to this kind of complexity problem.”
IDC analyst Brad Casemore agrees.
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