EWSDN 2013 - Second European Workshop on Software Defined Networks

Software Defined Networking is undoubtedly one of the chief trends in the ICT area. In the past year we have seen all big players in the networking arena starting to ride the SDN wave one way or another. The standardization work is actively ongoing in ONF with its 7 working groups, in the IETF where several working groups are somehow related to SDN (e.g. FORCES, NETMOD, NETCONF, ALTO, NVO3 and the recently formed I2RS), while the recent initiative of ETSI on Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is also tightly related to SDN. On top of the several existing Open Source SDN controllers, tools and development environments, the recently launched Open Daylight project is backed up by several players and it is receiving a lot of attention.
In parallel to this activity which is now largely driven by industry, the academia is also actively pursuing the SDN topic, both following the mainstream and using the SDN concepts in many innovative areas of applications or with disruptive approaches.
Considering the hot SDN research areas, a lot of interest is now focused on forwarding abstractions, "Northbound" APIs towards applications, SDN high level languages and tools for improving the software robustness like compilers and debuggers. Inter-domain aspects and inter-controller orchestration policies draw the attention of researchers as well. The idea of abstraction layers toward switching equipment has been proposed for new "Southbound" interfaces in order to manage the coexistence of different solutions besides the canonical OpenFlow approach (e.g., I2RS). New switch architectures supporting SDN are considered a hot topic. The application of SDN in the domain of optical networks is paving the way toward a unified control plane framework to integrate the packet and the optical domain, promoting a better coordination with higher network layers and applications. In mobile networks, the introduction of SDN will enable to program base stations' wireless data plane and to enhance the functionalities of the Evolved Packet Core, thus giving Mobile Operators greater control over their equipment and an opportunity to introduce novel value-added services. WLANs and WPANs can also benefit by the introduction of SDN concepts by improving resource utilization and facilitating their programmability.
Considering the strategic side of the SDN adoption, if SDN will progress to offer Carriers' Class solutions, which will be the impact on the telecom ecosystem? Which innovative services and business models will emerge out of the technology improvements?
European?
What makes an SDN workshop "European"? Traditional strengths of European research and development have been in optical transmission and wireless, especially cellular networks. The workshop emphasizes aspects of Software Defined Networks that come up when extending SDN 'beyond Ethernet'. In this regard, "European" does not mean that we restrict to a geographic scope, we welcome contribution and participation from all over the world. One goal of the workshop is to bring together industry and academia on the topics of SDN; in particular the workshop will feature an "industry forum", i.e. a session with presentations of key industrial players.
Contributions to the workshop
We are interested in both papers showing consolidated results and in position papers bringing up innovative ideas. We welcome contributions including, but not limited to, the following topics:
Forwarding abstractions, APIs, object models
Network Function Virtualization and SDN, Network Virtualization techniques based on SDN
Optical extensions to OpenFlow, SDN
Wireless integration, characterization of wireless interfaces, flows, handover support
Evolved packet core, LTE support for OpenFlow
New controller architectures, Application Programmer's Interfaces, SDN "north-bound" interfaces
Interoperation of cloud architectures and SDN
New switch architectures supporting SDN
New networking paradigms like Content or Information Centric Networks (CCN/ICN) and their relation with SDN
Carrier-grade SDN architectures and equipment
Practical experiments on OpenFlow / SDN based testbeds
Identification of use cases for SDN, SDN related business models, strategic role of SDN in network evolution
SDN frameworks and tools, SDN based equipment: controllers, switches, integrated development environment, testing and debugging environment