Study of the Complexity of Implementation and Maintenance of an SDN Network

The objective of this work is to study the migration of an existing corporate network to SDN technology, in order to demonstrate the advantages of an SDN network compared with a conventional network. To do this, we first appropriated SDN technology through its literature review. We then studied a classic corporate network and migrated it to an SDN architecture. We implemented this classic network in a virtual environment (MININET), followed by the SDN network proposed to replace it. By comparing the implementation process of these two networks, we have proven the simplicity of the implementation of the SDN network in comparison with that of the classic network studied. To study the complexity of maintenance, we used two scenarios. The first is based on the migration procedure from one VLAN to two VLANs in the two networks studied. The second was based on the evolution of routing rules in the two networks. On these two scenarios, we have proven that the SDN network presents a great simplicity in the implementation in comparison with the traditional network.