LBEF RESEARCH JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT

Author(s):Biraj Khatri, Prem Kumar Bhaskar

Abstract:Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new principle in the networking paradigm, which decouples networking into data plane and control plane thus making the network programmable. It is a new concept and has slowly been getting attention by many companies around the world as it has many advantages over the traditional networking process. But the process of migrating from traditional networking to SDN architecture is a difficult process especially for companies in developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to find the present situation of SDN in IT companies in context of Nepal and also to find the major challenges of migrating to SDN. For this, a survey was conducted among various IT professionals who have some knowledge about SDN or have worked in SDN involving both manual and online survey. This research used quantitative analysis approach to answer the research questions of this dissertation. From the analysis of 253 responses obtained from the survey it was found that SDN is still in infancy stage in Nepal as most of the companies surveyed only used it for testing purpose or control only small part of the networking infrastructure. It was found that SDN is still not fully integrated into majority of the companies and most of the IT professionals have just started out in SDN with majority having only 1 to 5 years’ experience in it. Similarly, regarding the limitations of SDN migration it was concluded that the major limitation of SDN is cost i.e. the cost of installing new devices supporting SDN. Other challenges included security, scalability issues, lack of knowledge and vendor support.

Keywords:SSDN, Testing, networking