Remember Internet2? It's now a software-defined metacloud

America's Internet2 research network is embracing the cloud, launching an SDN implementation designed to let academics create their own private clouds. The SDN rollout uses the FlowSpace Firewall to slice up segments of connected campuses' 100 Gbps Internet2 connections into discrete slices whose resources are protected from …

[Christian Berger]

The Internet was (nearly) always "software defined"

After all in the early days there was no hardware acceleration for routers. Routers simply were computers with multiple network interfaces. Particularly when Unix came to the Internet, those were more or less normal Unix computers.

[petur]

Re: The Internet was (nearly) always "software defined"

Yes... My router has hardware-NAT, which turns out to be an FPGA actually so one could argue even that is software ;)

[jake]

Re: The Internet was (nearly) always "software defined"

Not "(nearly)". Just always.

"Cloud" is a marketing meme that has zero meaning in actual technological circles.

UNIX(tm) existed a decade before what we now call "The Internet" was even a tickle in Vint Cerf's shorts. "The Internet" was born from *nix, not vice versa.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do some research first please

I think some of you might benefit from looking up what SDN actually is. I do recognise it is a bit of a misnomer but nevertheles a bit of research before posting would be nice. You can start with this lecture by Scott Shenker - a SDN leader and co-founder of the Open Networking Foundation and Nicira Networks, acquired by VMware in 2012 for, gulp, 1.26 billion $: http://youtu.be/eXsCQdshMr4

[Oninoshiko]

Sounds a lot like Internet2 just got VPN2

[Trevor_Pott]

It's more than just VPN. It's layer 2 extensibility across links.

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone plant trees anymore?

(sigh)

[Random Q Hacker]

Going Backwards

This reminds me of carving ISDN channels off a T1 back in the day. Moving those channels around at night to switch from phone to data capacity for backups, etc... And I'm glad those days are gone!

I guess kids need to reinvent things to earn their pieces of paper.