6. Are there any standards yet?
Yes, for OpenFlow. The ONF has two 'standards' (in quotes because remember, the ONF is an industry consortium, much like the Wi-Fi Alliance, not an independent, internationally recognized standards body like the IEEE or ITU): there's the OpenFlow Switch Specification 1.2(PDF) and OF-Config 1.0(PDF). The former defines the capabilities switches must support to correctly operate in an OpenFlow-controlled network, while the latter describes a configuration and management protocol for said OpenFlow switches.
7. What do critics say about SDN?
OpenFlow skeptics point out that we're too early in the technology's lifecycle to make any useful assessments of its value, impact, or longevity. A substantive critique is given by my colleague Mike Fratto at Network Computing, who predicts that OpenFlow Is Dead by 2014. His fundamental argument: Enterprise network operators are inherently conservative and risk averse, and thus very unlikely to ditch sizable investments in proprietary Cisco gear regardless of the potential feature benefits or cost savings from an OpenFlow network.
Fratto ultimately believes SDN technology will be absorbed into more sophisticated forms of network configuration and management tools; a notion that's consistent with Warrior's call for a holistic view of SDN as something beyond just network flow control.
For a different take, see what my Light Reading colleague Phil Harvey has to say in OpenFlow: A Cloud Industry Uprising?
8. Where are we in the SDN technology lifecycle?
Although SDN is in its infancy, little known outside the research community even a couple years ago, there were plenty of OpenFlow-compatible products on display at Interop. Of course NEC's controller won best of show, but InteropNet had an OpenFlow test lab with switches from Arista, Brocade, Dell/Force10, Extreme, Huawei, HP, IBM, Juniper, NEC, and Pronto Networks.
In addition, both Spirent and Ixia have OpenFlow-compatible test equipment, while Big Switch and NEC have commercial controllers, so building a working enterprise-grade OpenFlow network is entirely feasible.
See why NEC's network controller and eight other products stood out at Interop 2012 in the new, all-digital Best of Interop issue of InformationWeek. (Free registration required.)
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