Interview with Graham Walker

A: The SDN applications we refer to in the press release are currently being developed in partnership with a company in Japan. For business reasons we do not want to divulge too many details at this stage, but we can say the applications are focused on simplifying the IT management of enterprise networks for such things as employees who change roles and require different network access rights. We are also looking at opportunities to create networks that can be reconfigured frequently and rapidly for different groups of users, which would appeal to universities, for example.

Although there are traditional networking solutions available today for these applications, SDN allows us to deliver more flexible and powerful ways to solve these business problems that reduce costs, simplify management and empower customers to create their own solutions.

A: See the diagram below for an illustration of how the control and management planes are built in an AMF network. As you can see in the diagram, AMF and the SDN controller are separate components of the solution but they work together to control the operation of the entire network. Allied Telesis has successfully tested our OpenFlow solution against a number of 3rd party SDN controllers (including OpenDaylight). We support the use of open source controllers to allow the customer to choose the solution that fits their requirements best.

A: AMF is a network management toolkit that is embedded into the operating system of the network equipment (switches and routers). Its purpose is to automate many of the regular tasks that a network administrator would perform everyday such as configuration management, adding and replacing network devices, applying config changes, etc. It reduces operating costs by reducing the time spent on everyday tasks and by lowering the skill set required to maintain and repair the network because AMF will perform the reconfiguration automatically without manual intervention. AMF does not communicate via OpenFlow and is not concerned with user traffic (data); its purpose is to manage the network devices, not influence the data paths or traffic flows.

AMF can be used alongside an SDN controller such as OpenDaylight: AMF manages the network devices and OpenDaylight controls how the user traffic is forwarded. the two are independent but work together cohesively. We are not competing with OpenDaylight. SDN controls the data – we control the management.

A: The Allied Telesis vision is totally realistic and, not only do we have a working solution within a Japanese partner (as mentioned above) but we have extensive working pilots running in our labs now. We have AMF installations in enterprises across the world and are bringing a range of OpenFlow compliant hybrid SDN switches to market in the very near future. These switches will support AMF so a customer will be able to have an advanced SDN network to solve complex business problems, but be able to take advantage of AMF's management simplicity to save operating costs.