SDN Needs Open Source and Open Standards

During a panel session at the OpenDaylight Summit this week, Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), explained that his organization tries to standardize as little as possible. The ONF is the leading organization behind the OpenFlow protocol standard.

Guru Paralukar, executive director at the Open Networking Research Center (ONRC) and one of key figures in the evolution of OpenFlow, generally agreed with Pitt.

“In the networking world we have had an obsession with standards,” Paralukar said. “As networking has more of a software base, we need to operate more like the software industry and we should standardize as little as possible.”

Nick Lippis, one of the founders of the Open Networking User Group, noted that standards can play a role in SDN, but in his view, open source plays a more important role.

“Frankly, I think that the open source pieces of this will be more important and this group [OpenDaylight] represents the beginnings of that,” Lippis said.

Read the full story at Enterprise Networking Planet :
OpenDaylight Summit: SDN Needs Open Source and Open Standards

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.