The Future of Networking, and the Past of Protocols

Inspired by Barbara Liskov's brilliiant Turing Lecture on "The Power of Abstraction", I will discuss the role of abstraction in networking. I will show how searching for the appropriate network control abstractions leads to a new approach for network management called Software-Defined Networking (SDN), which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "OpenFlow". This talk will not cover any details of SDN or OpenFlow, but will instead try to place these ideas in the context of broader architectural issues.

Scott Shenker spent his academic youth studying theoretical physics but soon gave up chaos theory for computer science . Continuing to display a remarkably short attention span, his research over the years has wandered from computer performance modeling and computer networks to game theory and economics. Unable to hold a steady job, he currently splits his time between the U. C. Berkeley Computer Science Department and the International Computer Science Institute.