Although the technology has been around for years, vendors and carriers appear to be gathering behind software-defined network technology as a way to open bandwidth and deploy applications on the fly. Although the definition of SDN is somewhat tricky, the Open Networking Foundation defines it as enabling "the underlying infrastructure to be abstracted for applications and network services, which can treat the network as a logical or virtual entity." And there is already movement in the space: Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) has been working on SDN with Telstra in Australia and Huawei announced the creation of an SDN-based mobile backhaul solution created via a joint innovation project with China Telecom Guangzhou Institute. So what exactly are network vendors saying about SDN, and how close is it to a reality? Check out this FierceBroadbandWireless special report for more.
