SDN Use Cases for Service Provider Networks: Part 2.

The articles in this special section focus on software defined networking (SDN) and presents use cases for service providers. SDN is being heralded as a major breakthrough for provisioning new services, commoditizing network hardware and reducing service provider capital and operational expenditures. Decoupling the control plane from the data plane has its inherent advantages in terms of offering flexibility and presenting new service capabilities, but also presents operational and functional challenges. Such decoupling would create a new set of use cases, and equipment and network best practices that providers would have to imbibe in the near future. The key scope of these articles is to examine how SDN can be implemented in very large networks using commodity gear or white boxes through use cases.