The field of software-defined networking appears to be progressing at a break-neck speed. On a seemingly daily basis, another company comes out of the woodwork to announce a new product or technology that will further aid the development of SDN in businesses and telecoms everywhere. The latest development in this field comes from the Enterprise division of Alcatel-Lucent, which recently unveiled tech that aims to address the strain being placed on company networks.
Appearing at the recent Interop 2014 conference in Las Vegas, Alcatel-Lucent representatives announced that the company is preparing to launch new access switch and other network capabilities with its "Unified Access" approach to network management. These innovations will reportedly enable IT members to view network activity with greater granularity as well as control assets and make adjustments as needed.
A major component of these changes will be the addition of deep packet inspections at both the wired and wireless access layer. This increased visibility will allow administrators to better understand what forces are affecting overall network performance and provide insight regarding how to better allocate available resources. The expansion of these SDN capabilities will only further enhance the functionality of the company's Application Fluent Network system, which reportedly offers greater oversight regarding the interaction between applications and devices operating on a network.
According to Alcatel-Lucent, this feature will prove to be extremely useful for organizations that have struggled to cope with the sudden addition of cloud-based services and surge in mobile device use. Telecoms have been faced with their own increase in network strain as the emergence of more intensive applications and services have threatened to sap limited bandwidth.
With the launch of these new features, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise now offers a complete menu of SDN capabilities with end-to-end architecture support. Some of Alcatel-Lucent's SDN-based offerings include OpenFlow 1.0/1.3 services, REST APIs and the use of OpenStack plug-ins.
As more organizations develop SDN-based technology, telecoms will continue to find applications within their sector. By enhancing network operations and offering greater visibility and control over traffic, SDN will offer much value to carriers looking to distinguish themselves through high-quality service delivery.
