Researchers from a trio of companies have achieved a new milestone in the evolution of software-defined networking (SDN), by demonstrating a 500,000 route capacity test network that spanned three border gateway protocol (BGP) domains and two countries.

The demonstration was carried out by Corsa Technology Inc, ESnet and Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand (REANNZ), and was showcased as the world’s first “Internet scale” software-defined network of three autonomous systems (AS) managed as SDN domains.

ESnet’s node used the Corsa DP6420 640Gbps data plane as the OpenFlow packet forwarder, using the Vandervecken open-source SDN controller, which uses the Quagga software routing suite and RouteFlow. California’s CENIC research network, the PacificWave peering exchange and Australia’s AARNET provided the data transport.

According to REANNZ, the demonstration illustrates the potential to successfully setup full Internet scale routing over an international network of mixed use SDN and non-SDN autonomous systems.

The trio of companies have since launched an international project called “Treehouse”, and hope to attract other campuses to join the network.

“Establishing an end-to-end SDN BGP, multi-AS network is an important milestone in the development of next-generation IP networks and peering fabrics’ said Steve Cotter, CEO of REANNZ. ‘By teaming the VANDERVECKEN controller with the Corsa DP6420’s scalable data plane, we have moved from the concept phase to actually passing bits across separate production SDN networks. Treehouse is yet another in a long list of successful projects where research networks and industry come together to develop cutting- edge technologies and demonstrate what is possible.”

Inter Monga, CTO of ESnet, said the demo shows it’s possible to overcome key SDN challenges like multi-domain peering, interoperation and policy-based routing.

photo credit: Bobby Mckay via photopin cc