Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Software defined networking (SDN) is an approach to simplify computer networking. SDN allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of lower level functionality. This is done by decoupling the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent (the control plane) from the underlying systems that forwards traffic to the selected destination (the data plane).

SDN requires some method for the control plane to communicate with the data plane, and OpenFlow is one such mechanism. The Open Networking Foundation was founded to promote SDN and OpenFlow as marketing using the term cloud computing became popular.

The benefits of SDN include:

• Separating the control planes and data planes
• Control planes own global vision of the network
• Centralized control
• Hardware independent networking structure

As network capacity increase rapidly, faster time-to-market solutions become, more importantly, a key to success. Traditional network structure requires 1 to 2 years of product development phase for the device manufacturers, while with SDN, the development time can be shorten significantly.

Portwell has supplied to the traditional network appliance market since 1999. And for future network structure, Portwell has already partnered with several software companies to provide complete solutions. The Portwell CAD-0205 is our first SDN compliant system.

• Intel® ATOM™ N450 (Pineview-M SC) 1.66GHz Processor
• Intel® ICH8-M Chipset
• 4 PCI-E GbE port onboard with 2 bypass segements
• One Mini-PCIe slot for wireless applications