HP takes giant first step into OpenFlow

HP this week said it is taking its first leap into OpenFlow-enabled network equipment, supporting the standard on 16 of its Ethernet switch products as it attempts to gain a foothold in a market likely to receive significant attention from competitors.

Beyond adding OpenFlow support on this first batch of switches, which includes the HP 3500, 5400 and 8200 series, HP plans to extend OpenFlow support across all of the switches offered pursuant to this agreement its FlexNetwork architecture.

OpenFlow is a software-defined networking standard that has been a major topic of discussion in the network and infrastructure management field of late, with those in academia and the technology sector weighing its potential for the future. At first used for innovation, OpenFlow in essence replaces the network equipment required for the control plane with source code. Proponents say doing that eliminates the need for hundreds, or at times thousands, of switches and routers, enabling network managers to move core routers to the edge and better examine the network. As well, because the controller is adapted to software code, network managers are afforded the freedom to program their own networks.

The network

OpenFlow's ability to help IT staff gain insight into the network and develop absolutely new architectures is what made it a win for the researchers and technologists who worked with it from the start. This includes HP Networking distinguished technologist Charles Clark, who worked alongside the first technologists who crafted OpenFlow at Stanford University in 2007.

"We started working with Stanford and found that they had come up with this very interesting idea of being able to centrally control flow tables of switches in the network, and trying to understand how we can use that both for innovation purposes and perhaps also for solutions for clients," Clark says.

However, OpenFlow has primarily remained a innovation protocol in the four years since it was introduced. That's why Saar Gillai, CTO of HP Networking, says the announcement of OpenFlow support for the company's switches is a landmark for HP.

Growth in OpenFlow adoption and real-world use at the enterprise network level will not happen overnight, Gillai says. At first sight, he expects organizations, including universities, that are already familiar with OpenFlow to be open to HP's new switch portfolio. Once those use cases gain more recognition, the conversation in the industry surrounding OpenFlow will shift from the theoretical to that of real-world results, Gillai says.

"Even though there are undoubtedly deployments that people are in fact using, most of the chatter is around what could be done," Gillai says. "Over the then year, as people start using this type of research in certain applications, whether it's with service providers, large data centers when all is said and done forth, some of the discussion will move more toward how things are done or what deployments look like and where it looks better and where it looks worse. So I think it's going to be more discussion about experience and less discussion about theoretical."

Experts on OpenFlow believe widespread adoption of the protocol will be gradual simply because of the nature of the network industry. Dan Schmiedt, executive director of network and telecom at Clemson University, says current infrastructure management practices are so ingrained in traditional standards that it will take time for many to migrate.

The same protocols

"In other words to say that nothing is in effect changing or advancing -- we're all in all basically using the same protocols and paradigms we used 20 years ago," Schmiedt says. "For good reason, too: it works, and even if someone came up with the best new protocol there ever had been, it would be in the best case a decade earlier it was implemented in any network box."

However, the progression may be moving along more quickly than Schmiedt had predicted. In his work with OpenFlow and software-defined networking at Clemson, Schmiedt has already seen the potential for widespread operational change stemming from an innovative approach to the network.

The most important thing about SDN/OF

"Like as not that is the most important thing about SDN/OF: it opens networking to true innovators instead of simple protocol plumbers like me," Schmiedt says. "My world is fixed in the OSI model and the way we've always done things. Since the advent of OF, and for the first time in my 15 years in networking, I regularly interact with students and faculty who seek to solve real-world networking problems."

HP truly isn't alone in the race to make network equipment Openflow compatible. IBM and NEC, for instance, have collaborated on a collection of OpenFlow-enabled switches.

Colin Neagle covers Microsoft security and network management for Network World. Keep up with his blog: Rated Critical, follow him on Twitter: @ntwrkwrldneagle. Colin's email is cneagle@nww.com.