At the recent MEF GEN15 conference, I was fortunate to speak with a large number of analysts (financial and industry) about the Software Defined Networking revolution that appeared to be taking place on the show floor in Dallas. As opposed to past shows full of vendor slideware and closed demonstrations, this year’s show was full of service provider slideware and much more open demonstrations.

After one particularly long discussion on the industry, industry trends, and recent announcements, one analyst ended the discussion with, “so SDN is basically bandwidth on demand, right?” He could be forgiven for thinking this, as nearly every demonstration on the show floor and most of the case studies in the service provider talks centered on bandwidth on demand applications. But SDN is much, much more than bandwidth on demand.

SDN fundamentally means that the network is no longer statically built to look a certain way with changes only via user intervention, hardware replacement, or other planned management. SDN means that the network can understand applications and higher level requirements and re-design itself to meet those needs. This capability is just starting to be deployed, but has a huge potential to change the way that networks are deployed and maintained going forward.

Bandwidth on demand has been around for many years as a potential killer app. In the 1990s, bandwidth on demand was the impetus for development of control plane technology like GMPLS. Bandwidth on demand has been shown by nearly every vendor at some point as a reason to deploy their latest equipment. But bandwidth on demand has never quite taken off due to limitations like closed solutions (only one vendor’s gear can take part) or management (no understanding of higher level networking requirements). SDN has solved many of those issues, which is why bandwidth on demand is finally a reality in some networks.

But SDN can be so much more. Ex-Verizoner Stu Elby once described an SDN implementation that would allow part of their network to be re-assigned as an analytic network for a faulty cell tower without the need to deploy additional equipment. MRV and Allot networks in collaboration with Orange/France Telecom showed a demonstration of an access network that is application aware and can adjust flow priorities based on user-defined sets of higher priority applications. The ONF describes a routerless routed network where Layer 2 paths are created based on a centralized understanding of the network and without the need for routing tables. The number of demonstrations and deployments grows every month.

We are just beginning to discover the full potential of a software defined network. As more programmable and more flexible equipment is deployed and more powerful software and controllers are developed, we will see new and innovative solutions come into being that have not yet been imagined. It is an exciting time to be in the telecommunications business.