OpenFlow And Network Value: Page 2 of 4

Therefore, a value model of network equipment could be represented like this and reflects the vendor value in the device:

It’s worth noting that while many protocols have been developed over the last decade to extend management and operational capability--such as BEEP and NetConf--none have been able to gain acceptance by the major vendors or the market.

But the rise of merchant silicon has changed this dynamic. Vendors such as Arista, Broadcom and Extreme, purchase and use merchant (or off-the-shelf) silicon or even entire
systems, and then differentiate offerings with their own operating system, command line interface (CLI) and APIs for integration with external systems. The hardware is the same for systems from many vendors, and the emphasis is on OS and implementation features at a low cost at acceptable to good performance

Enter OpenFlow. The announcement of OpenFlow has some people in networking optimistic that we are about to see a significant change in innovation and progress on network management. OpenFlow is a nascent networking specification that has three key elements: a software controller, the OpenFlow protocol and a client on the network device. It’s important to comprehend that all three elements combine to create a single coherent solution.

Consider the service process for the configuration and management of current devices and their management. The network policy is translated by network engineers into
commands that are commonly configured using SSH at the CLI. In this Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) process world, the value of the device is currently measured as the operational capability of the
interface. OpenFlow changes this paradigm by moving some of the configuration functions to a “controller.”