SDN Application to Existing Government Network Infrastructure

Because of growing and changing business requirements, the commercial industry has aggressively begun deploying Software Defined Networking (SDN) as a means towards increased control and rapid reconfiguration of network infrastructure. The government enterprise also needs the ability to rapidly change network infrastructure due to changing and evolving mission requirements especially with the introduction of new cybersecurity requirements. The purpose of this project is to develop a testbed allowing us to explore how high performance network interface cards such as the Agilio Smartcard from Netronome could be introduced into existing government network systems enabling limited SDN capability as a transitional step towards a more complete SDN solution of the future. By placing the Agilio Smartcard within existing servers and other key locations within the network as black-boxes, we want to explore the viability of deploying following key SDN capabilities on-demand: network traffic monitoring, watermarking, deep-packet inspection, load balancing, network security, etc.