Designing a course and infrastructure for teaching software-defined networking

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging technology that allows efficient and flexible management of networking equipment through standard interfaces. In order to encourage the seamless adoption of this technology, a new approach for the education of network engineers should be established, shifting the focus from conventional vendor specific technologies toward the concepts of standardized network management. In this paper, we propose an approach for designing an SDN course where students are encouraged to learn how to design and manage software-defined networks in general, rather than focusing on the specifics of one vendor in particular. In addition, deeper student involvement is achieved through the use of globally available Open APIs and open source software which are the backbone of the course. The approach was evaluated at the graduate studies at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. The results indicate that the proposed approach can have a positive impact on the learning process, and in time hopefully serve as a stepping stone for the education of the new generation of network engineers.