Welcome to the course on Software Defined

Networking.
My name is Nick Feamster, I'm a professor
in the School of Computer Science at
Georgia Tech.
I'll be your instructor for this course.
In this course, you'll learn about
software defined networking and how
it's changing the way communications
networks are managed, maintained and
secured.
This module provides a brief introduction
to the course.
We'll talk about needs and expectations
for the course.
After this lecture you'll be able to
determine whether or not this course
applies
to you and identify whether or not
you have the necessary prerequisites for
the course.
We'll also learn how much time commitment
each module will require.
Also provide a brief overview of the
modules that are in this course.
Briefly who I am.
My name is Nick Feamster and here's a link
to my webpage and my blog.
You're welcome to check those out.
My research is in network security and
operations.
The goal of my research is to improve
network
availability in the face of both
accidental and malicious faults.
The areas of my research, span
reliability,
management, security and trust,
anti-censorship, and network economics.
Your TA for this course will be Muhammad
Shahbaz,
who's one of my PhD students at Georgia
Tech.
So why should you take this course?
One reason to take this course is to learn
about the motivation and origins of
Software Defined Networking.
Another would be to understand current
trends in SDN technologies.
Might also want to learn about the types
of networking problems that SDN is good at
solving, then you might also want to
develop
hands-on experience applying SDN to
different domains networking.
By the end of the course you will learn a
number of things.
First you'll be able to apply SDN concepts
to solve real network management problems.
Such as how to load balance traffic across

data center or backbone networks.

Or how to better secure enterprise
networks.
You'll be able to set up your own software
defined network in a virtual machine.
You'll also be able to use SDN to solve
problems in data center, inter-domain
routing and other domains.
There are a few prerequisites for this
course.
First we expect that you have some basic
programming experience in
Python as well as some basic socket
programming experience in C.
We also expect that you have basic
knowledge in computer networking, such
as that which you might learn in an
undergraduate computer networking course.
Because there'll be a fair amount of
working with
virtual machines, some experience with the
Linux operating system is
required, and we also prefer that you have
some
experience working with a virtual machine
environment like virtual box.
Although you'll be able to pick that up
along the
way if you haven't had exposure to that in
the past.
As a first activity we ask that you
take the pre-assessment quiz on the
Coursera site.
You should be able to take this quiz which
has
example questions from quizzes that I've
given in undergraduate networking courses.
If you can't easily pass this quiz, you'll
probably have difficulty in this course.
Additionally we suggest that you write a
simple client server program in Python.
Instructions for doing this are on the
course website.
This is for yourself only you don't need
to turn the code in, but if you
have trouble doing this as well you may
have trouble with the rest of the course.
Here's a brief over view of the modules of
the course.
First we're providing an overview after
that we'll jump into the
first module which is a history and
evolution of software defined networking.
After that we'll talk about the principle
of
separating the control and data planes in
a network.
Then we'll talk about virtual networking.
After that I'll get into the nuts and
bolts in the infrastructure of a software

defined networking.
In particular more software define
networks have
two pieces, the control plane and the data
plane so we'll talk about each of those
and the various ways to implement them.
After we talk about the infrastructure of
SDN, we'll talk about how to program
SDN's.
Then we'll look at various use cases.
How you can actually use software defined
networks to
make various network management problems
easier in different domains.
Finally we'll look at various challenges
faced by software defined networking
moving forward.
As far as time commitment from you, each
module with have between
one and four lessons, and each lesson will
have a short quiz.
Some modules actually have a longer
hands-on assignment as well.
And some of these hands-on assignments
will be longer than others.
These hands-on assignments do get a little
bit more
intense towards the nuts and bolts portion
of the course.
But on average you should expect to spend
about 7-10 hours a week on this course.
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