OpenFlow

Just read the OpenFlow whitepaper: OpenFlow: Enabling Innovation in Campus Networks. It sounds like an interesting way to allow networking research coincide with a production network. Their website is: OpenFlow

My summary:
There is a need for a virtualized programmable network in order to allow networking research to progress.  Creating new protocols in small isolated networks do not provide enough data to move into widespread use, and it is impractical to experiment with the production network of a university or other institution.  The proposal here is to insert an open software platform on top of commercial networking switches that allow a virtual experimental network to ride alongside the production network, but still allows access to the high performance and port density of the networking hardware.  Using OpenFlow you could implement VLANs, but it also gives the flexibility to do more.

OpenFlow Switch  (Type 0)

1. Flow Table with actions for flow entries
1. Actions
1. Forward to a port
2. Encapsulate and forward
3. Drop
4. Forward through normal processing
2. Entries
1. Packet Header
2. Action
3. Statistics
2. Secure Channel from controller
3. OpenFlow protocol to communicate with controller

Controllers

• Adds/removes flows
• Scalable, one controller can support many flows and switches