Special Guest at D-ITET: Nick McKeown

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at

Faculty Director of the Open Networking Research Center Software-Defined Networks and the Maturing of the Internet

Monday, 24 November 2014, 15:15 Auditorium ETF E1, Sternwartstrasse 7, 8092 Zurich

Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Abstract The genius of the pioneers of the Internet was to keep the network of links and routers – the “plumbing” – dumb and minimal, placing as much of the intelligence as possible in the computers at the edge. Our computers at the edges could be upgraded over time to add new features – such as congestion control and security – without having to change the network. A streamlined network could focus on forwarding packets as fast as possible. A simple network with distributed control allowed for organic, explosive growth in the 1990s, with small businesses popping up everywhere to offer Internet service.

But over time the network became more and more bloated, straying far from the original intent, with thousands of complicated features locked inside closed, vertically integrated routers. Networks became harder to manage, and those who own large networks fell under a stranglehold from their equipment vendors. Innovation was slow, equipment was unreliable and profit margins were through the roof. The networking industry of the 2000s turned into the mainframe industry of the 1980s. Along came compa- nies building data centers with thousands of switches and routers, with a pressing need to place the network under their control. Over-priced firewalls and load-balancers were replaced with homegrown software running on servers. Routers and switches were simplified, making them more reliable, lower- cost and lower-power. The entire network was placed under the control of software created using modern software practices. The software defined network (SDN) was born. In turn, SDN made it easier to use the servers, storage and network more efficiently by virtualizing the network.

In this talk Nick McKeown will explain why – despite all the hype – software-defined networks were really just an inevitable next stage in the maturation of the Internet. And he will explain what he thinks happens next.

Biography Nick McKeown (PhD/MS UC Berkeley ’95/’92; B.E Univ. of Leeds, ’86) is the Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield and Sequoia Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University, and Faculty Director of the Open Networking Research Center. From 1986-1989 he worked for Hewlett- Packard Labs in Bristol, England. In 1995, he helped architect Cisco’s GSR 12000 router. In 1997, Nick co-founded Abrizio Inc. (acquired by PMC-Sierra), where he was CTO. He was co-founder and CEO of Nemo (“Network Memory”), which is now part of Cisco. In 2007, he co-founded Nicira (acquired by VMware) with and . In 2011, he co-founded the Open Networking Founda- tion (ONF) with Scott Shenker.

Nick is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), Fellow of the IEEE and the ACM. In 2005, he was awarded the British Computer Society Lovelace Medal, in 2009 the IEEE Kobayashi Computer and Communications Award and in 2012 the ACM Sigcomm Lifetime Achievement Award. He received the IEEE Rice Award for the best paper in communications theory. Nick’s current research interests include software defined networks (SDN), network verification, video streaming, how to enable more rapid improvements to the Internet infrastructure, and tools and platforms for networking research and teaching.