HP Explains OpenFlow

Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio) A command line view of IT

One of the most interesting things to emerge out of the Interop conference this year was OpenFlow.

Sure, I know that OpenFlow was previously a research thing, but at Interop, OpenFlow came alive for me as I saw it demonstrated in the NOC and on the show floor.

OpenFlow, in my opinion, is the future of networking.

It is open source, open standards and it is connected.

The basic idea with OpenFlow is you can connect multiple switches and even networks together to create a flow – essentially VLAN on steroids. You can then manage an entire infrastructure, setting policies and managing traffic type accordingly.

There are alot of different way of doing the same thing today, nearly all of them involve some degree of vendor lock-in which is why OpenFlow is so very appealing to me personally.

One of the best explanations I got at Interop about OpenFlow came from HP, which is an active participant in the OpenFlow effort.

Check out the video after the jump to get the full details:

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