Contents I. Introduction
Software-defined network has now become a paradigm in the field of networks. Software-defined network decouple data and control plane and migration the control plane to software controllers. Legacy network with multi -platform will offer complex network manageability. With multi-platform network become more complex and need specific skill set to manage traffic flow. Software-defined network hardware and software tends to provide simpler and more flexible functionality which only focus on traffic flow. Software-defined network control plane provides software which takes care of managing the network and how hardware will forward traffic. It deployment have the capability to power by centralized functionalities allows different techniques for managing networks. Control of network is centralized and software controller manages forwarding hardware performance and decisions. Traffic flow in software-defined network is abstracted as flow, makes it independent whether data will travel over IP, Ethernet, or any other lower layer. Forwarding rules in software-defined network are dynamically updated in tables, called traffic flow table. Traffic analysis is software based which helps in traversing flows. This is allowed by centralized controller which used software detection techniques and pattern identification. Above mentioned capabilities have also enabled significant research and implementation scenarios how software-defined network will redefined the networking. Conventional Network and multiplatform architecture. Architecture of Legacy network, its challenges, and benefits are explained. Multiplatform Architecture are used in large organization or enterprises for failover, DRC, cluster scenarios to make conventional network running all the time. Performance and Functionality of network is implemented on dedicated hardware. This evolves multiplatform architecture in an organization, when IT Administrator have to manage different hardware appliance individually to make single change. Conventional network has enhanced its performance, scalability and complexity by adding advance hardware and software. Which makes it more and more powerful and on other hand more skill set and special labor required to manage it. Network Resources like router, firewall, hubs, switches, etc. comes from many different vendors having vendor-specific IOS and management rules. Now these rule differs from vendor-to-vendor and one needs to learn these for very vendor by using which one can operate or manage these network resource. Migration process from legacy network to software-defined network. Process of migration is explained that how we know the traditional network, its requirements for migration process. OpenFlow configuration is required for this purpose. First of all a virtualized environment has been created with using VMware, Mininet, test bed. OpenFlow basic configuration are included for traffic flow of data packets. Once the environment has been setup, then simulated towards the results and traffic flow entries. Multiplatform migration using software-defined network simulation is carried out. Evaluation and result compilation came along with the result. Analysis of results and conclusion is derived.
