A method and device for incremental deployment of software-defined networking into an enterprise network

摘要

The present invention provides a method of operating a network comprising legacy switches and software-defined networking, SDN, switches with a plurality of switchports. The plurality of switchports in the network is divided into a set of SDN ports and a set of legacy ports. However, a SDN ports it is not necessarily physically located on an SDN switch. Rather, a SDN port may be connected to a SDN switch or a legacy switch. The network traffic is controlled such that traffic to and/or from any one of the SDN ports passes through at least one of the SDN switches. Thereby, the method provides an abstraction of the network into a logical software-defined network. The invention further provides a tool for selecting a number of legacy switches in a network to be replaced by SDN switches in order to incrementally deploy the network to a partially deployed network, and a method for planning incremental deployment of a network comprising legacy switches using the tool.