OpenDaylight, le SDN open source, a dix ans

2023-08-24 03:27:00

OpenDaylight is ten years old. This free software is today one of the most widely used SDNs in the world. A look back at the birth of the project and its evolution over the years, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation.

What are we talking about ?

Open Daylight, is a major open source project in the field of networking. It’s an open, modular platform that makes it possible to customize and automate networks of any size and scope.

The project was launched under the aegis of the Linux Foundation to focus on SDN. OpenDaylight has also played a key role in creating critical mass for network technologies.

The current version is OpenDaylight Sulfur (16).

OpenDaylight and the beginnings of SDN

The history of OpenDaylight merges with what is called the birth of software-defined networks (SDN), which began to gain momentum about a decade ago.

The evolution of language WHICH was one of the key developments in the field. Prior to YANG, configuration data lacked clear definitions. YANG tackled this problem by clearly defining the configuration and its intent.

Since 2013, several events have moved SDN and OpenDaiylight forward:

OpenFlow 1.3 was introduced, allowing the protocole OpenFlow to be used in production. Cisco’s initial code has been incorporated into a private Linux Foundation repository, marking the start of OpenDaylight as a community aiming to cover all aspects of SDN. Projects around BGP, PSAP and others have been introduced, allowing integration into Service Provider (NSP) networks. There migration vers Apache Karaf 4 revealed significant technical debt that needed to be managed. This means that OpenDaylight needed to be refined and redefine its scope, which should help stabilize it.

OpenDaylight: what future?

OpenDaylight is today a project at the forefront of network programmability and automation. Its scalability improvements, in particular, have had a significant impact since 2015.

The future is mapped out: it will befurther improve the scalability of the project and gradually eliminate legacy codes remaining.

On the other hand, a risky revision is planned: it will be necessary remove all compatibility layers, even if they do not cause urgent problems. Additionally, OpenDaylight aims to move to a more microservices-oriented architecture, which is a significant shift in its design philosophy. All of this will, of course, be done in conjunction with containerization technologies like Docker and orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.

We understood it. OpenDaylight is ready to face it, forging its way into the world of solutions SDN open-sourcestill under the aegis of LF Networkingbranch network of the Linux Foundation.