SplitArchitecture: Applying the Software Defined Networking Concept to Carrier Networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow in particular has a lot of interest in the research and the academic communities. The SDN concept evolves current design philosophies and could be assumed as one approach of a future clean slate internet design. Nonetheless, the concept requires some advancement for integration in a carrier network environment. The ICT project SPARC, funded by the European Commission, is developing a SplitArchitecture concept in order to close this gap. Based on typical use cases, requirements have been derived and integrated in the process of developing the concept. The service creation for residential customers in access/ aggregation networks is a first result. Moreover an overview on the improvements by SplitArchitecture for carrier networks is provided.