Nick McKeown

On August 30, in the Digital October center Stanford University Professor of Electronic and Computer Sciences Nick McKeown talked about how a simple invention will fundamentally change the internet.

Nick McKeon has worked in development of network technologies since the 1980s. He is one of the creators of the architecture of the Cisco series GSR 12000 routers and cofounder of The Network Memory Company, which produces chipsets for network equipment and was purchased by Cisco Systems in 2005 for $12.5 million in cash. Today, Professor McKeown, along with some of his colleagues at the university, is working to develop a new network architecture that, in his words, "promises to forever change the principles of constructing computer networks that were laid down in the 1960s and 70s."

The protocol developed by Professor McKeown and his colleagues is named OpenFlow, and the new network architecture founded thereon is referred to as Software Defined Networking (SDN). The innovation here consists in the division between control of data switching and transmission: a special software will be responsible for packet switching, not network equipment. Specialists believe that the speed of data transmission will increase, including in cellular networks; the level of network security will rise; and it will become easier to work with equipment of different companies in the framework of a single network.

In the opinion of the largest world IT corporations, such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo, adopting the OpenFlow protocol will allow them to significantly simply and ease regulation of corporate networks and data centers.

Stanford Professor Nick McKeown, one of the creators of SDN, talked about what changes yet await the IT industry, how SDN will influence cloud technology and global and corporate networks, and how innovations will affect average users.