Killer App for Overlay Networking/SDN

SDN has been searching for a killer app since its birth in the midst of protocol and encapsulation debates of 2011. It wasn't monitoring, flow management or physical network orchestration for a controller. It turns out it is container networking.

Container is challenging the VM or a group of them is a unit of application. Its value proposition is removal of the virtualization tax and being open source it does not cost a whole lot to try out. The schedulers (k8, mesos etc.) seem to be maturing fast enough but the networking behind is still quite elementary.

Using offloads that accelerate encap/decap of an overlay network on the JEOS (Just enough OS), containers with virtual interfaces can outperform hypervisor based VMs and integrate better with orchestration technology like gubernetes.

L3 to Server

There is a trend towards moving switching (L2) out of the hypervisor and onto a NIC. After multiple false starts, it looks like it might actually happen.

Overlay networks essentially empower a virtual management tool or orchestrator to perform the control functions of a L2 network. The tool knows the full lifecycle of a VM and does not really need to learn any mac addresses. Coupled with a intelligent NIC and some standard based overlay (MacInIP), this tool can remove the need for a L2 switch in Hypervisor and facilitate bring L3 network directly to a server. If this happens, it will shift the network edge inside a server and shift the market power away from pure networkers to server vendors.