Software defined networking opportunities for transport

The economic landscape where trends of computing and networking are diverging creates motivation for new engineering paradigms. One emerging paradigm is software defined networking, whose attributes include separation of control from forwarding, enabling joint optimization of computing and networking deployments, software-defined functions at a number of layers, including the transport (i.e., optical and TDM) layer, enabling simpler interworking of different administrative and technology domains, and application-aware transport network resources. This column provides some background on the aspects of SDN related to transport networking, summarizes major drivers, trends, and issues to be addressed, and concludes by discussing areas of potential research and development for transport-related future SDN work.