Lippis Report 208: A Robust Underlay to Support a Hyper Growth and Dynamic Overlay
At the Open Networking Users Group or ONUG this past February in Boston at Fidelity Investments, Chief Network Architects (CNAs) from the largest corporations discussed their Software-Defined Networking or SDN plans, obstacles, requirements and experiences. Two key systemic messages from this meeting were that network opex has to fundamentally change and that business unit managers are demanding self-service IT provisioning. These two requirements provide CNAs permission to break away from 25 years of networking to implement a new architecture that will meet these needs. One large bank showed a graphic plotting the rate of adoption of business unit self-service virtual machine adds, pauses and deletions. The curve was exponential and so, too, was the rise of its overlay virtualized network. And it’s just the beginning as virtualized network overlay adoption is in its infancy, considering only 48% of servers are virtualized and a much smaller number of virtual machines are networked. The questions many IT business leaders are asking are: “Can my underlay or physical network infrastructure support the huge growth of my overlay?” “What changes are required for my data center network infrastructure?” “What capabilities should I be looking for?” In this Lippis Report Research Note, we explore the role of network underlays in their support of virtualized network overlays.
There are over 1.5 billion people worldwide using the internet representing only 23.5 percent of world population and we are now entering an Internet population explosion as emerging internet countries go online and need address space. Experts predict that an…
