This week ESnet is hosting a three-day workshop to develop a “Roadmap to Operational Software Defined Networking-based networks,” with participants from other research and education networks, universities, government agencies, international networks and networking equipment vendors. Software defined networking, or SDN, is an approach that allows network administrators to manage network services by decoupling various levels of network functionality, enabling more flexibility in moving data and meeting application requirements.

The July 14-16 workshop at Berkeley Lab will include short presentations on the “state of the union” of various SDN deployments at universities, networks and national labs, as well as at ESnet. After a day-and-a-half of presentations, attendees will form breakout groups to assess how can the community work with the open source software community and vendors to tackle the SDN operational gaps and to develop a roadmap to SDN deployments. The third day of the workshop will focus on security related issues to SDN.

Organized by ESnet, Internet2, DOE, the National Science Foundation and the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program, the workshop is expected to draw 70 attendees in person. Those not attending can access the workshop via Zoom at https://go.zoom.us/join, and joining # 510 486-4100.