I have been following and working in space of Software Defined Networking (SDN), which is getting hotter by the minute , for over 2 years now. My interest comes from spending number of years inside the network stacks of different products that I have worked on as well as standards that I either used, contributed to or both.

There are a LOT of information, definitions, etc. of SDN and network virtualization however when I am being approached by the engineers I can only spend some much time explaining what it is, which (once again) remains at a very high level. Knowing engineers and being one the high level typically is understood in 10 minutes but “How to?”s typically takes us to whiteboard. Bottom line I was missing the info that’s right to the point, that I could reference instead of creating my own each time on the fly when question comes up. Finally, a few days ago I have ran into presentation of “Open vSwitch: Past, Present and Future” by Ben Pfaff that was organized by Bay Area Network Virtualization group.

Ben Pfaff is one of the first employees of Nicira that as you know was acquired not too long ago by VMware. Ben one of the original contributors to what became known as OpenFlow and Open vSwitch.

This video is great if you interested in “How to?”s before doing your own magic, and also prepended with history, etc.

Not to drag it for much longer…

In addition I have found this interesting slide deck by Ben that can be used as a prerequisite for this video.

Enjoy!