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Indiana University's network research unit, the Indiana Center for Network Translational Research (InCNTRE), is now serving as a test bed for OpenFlow and other software-defined networking (SDN) products. On Wednesday, it hosted the kickoff meeting of a new business user group devoted to software-defined networking.

The InCNTRE Software-Defined Networking User Group (ISUG) brought together network administrators from Fortune 500 companies in finance, insurance, healthcare and travel, according to Matthew Davy, executive director of InCNTRE.

"Private sector network engineers, network architects and IT managers are busy getting up to speed on software-defined networking and trying to understand how it will affect their networks," said Davy in an announcement of the meeting on the InCNTRE website. "Given our expertise, it made perfect sense to form the ISUG as a way to facilitate the flow of information between IU's SDN experts and the private sector," he said.

The OpenFlow protocol separates the control plane from the forwarding plane in switches, so that software applications on a central controller can issue instructions to switches and routers to change the nature of the network.