Syllabus

Jan 4

LectureCourse Overview: Slides, Video

Learning Objectives

Explore answers to these two questions:
1. why am I taking this course, and
2. how will it benefit me?
Identify whether you have the necessary prerequisites.

Survey Please fill out this survey form. It will help the teaching staff better understand your background, preferences, and various challenges you all face due to the remote nature of this class.

Readings

Jan 6

LectureIntellectual History of SDN: Slides, Video

Learning Objectives

Understand how lack of abstractions required network practitioners to focus on mastering complexity.
Learn about different abstractions proposed by Software-defined networking enabling extracting simplicity for network’s control plane.
Learn how these abstractions are realized by different instantiations of SDN.

Readings

Discussion Section No Discussion this week

Jan 11

LectureProgrammable Data Planes: Slides, Video

Learning Objectives

Understand the differences between software and hardware data planes
Understand the differences between fixed-function and programmable (reconfigurable) packet-processing pipelines
Identify how the top-down design of reconfigurable PISA switches makes networks truly programmable

Readings

Jan 13

LectureNetwork Operating Systems: Slides, Video

Learning Objectives

Understand the differences between different SDN controllers (or Network OSes)
Understand how SDN controllers instantiate the distributed state abstractions, related scalability challenges, and how existing solutions address these challenges

Readings

Review Form Please submit the review form for the reading assignment, Onix: A Distributed Control Platform for Large-scale Production Networks.

Note: Please submit this review form by 2 pm PT, Jan 13, 2021.

Discussion Section

Getting Started with Mininet

Slides, Video

Learning objectives:

Be able to explain what is Mininet, how it works, and how to use it on your laptops.
Understand how to use Mininet to reproduce networking research results.

Resources:

Reproducible Network Experiments Using Container-Based Emulation, CoNEXT, 2012.
A Network in a Laptop: Rapid Prototyping for Software-Defined Networks, HotNets, 2020.
Learning Networking by Reproducing Research Results, ACM SIGCOMM CCR, 2017.
Reproducing Networking Research Results
Mininet Github repo
Intro to Mininet
Mininet Walkthrough

Jan 18

LectureNo Class

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Jan 20

LectureNetwork Virtualization: Slides, Video

Readings

Discussion SectionRouting Network Traffic: Slides, Video

Jan 25

LectureProgrammable Languages for SDN: Slides, Video

Readings

Required: Composing Software-Defined Networks

Review Form Please submit the review form for the reading assignment, Composing Software-Defined Networks.

Note: Please submit this review form by 2 pm PT, Jan 25, 2021.

Jan 27

LectureCancelled

Review Form Please submit the review form for the reading assignment, SDX: A Software Defined Internet Exchange.

Note: Please submit this review form by 2 pm PT, Jan 29, 2021.

Feb 1

LectureProgrammable Interdomain Routing: Slides, Video

Readings

Feb 3

LectureProgrammable WANs (1/2): Slides, Video

Readings

Review Form Please submit the review form for the reading assignment, B4: Experience with a Globally-Deployed Software Defined WAN.

Note: Please submit this review form by 2 pm PT, Feb 5, 2021.

Project Proposal Please submit the proposal for the term project by 11:59 pm PT, Feb 8, 2021. Please email your proposal to the course instructor (arpitgupta@ucsb.edu).