Original article by Dorgival Guedes, Luiz Filipe Menezes Vieira, Marcos Menezes Vieira, Henrique Rodrigues e Rogério Vinhal Nunes: https://homepages.dcc.ufmg.br/~mmvieira/cc/papers/minicurso-sdn.pdf

This mini-course presents concepts, motivations, challenges, and the many opportunities on software-defined networks (SDN). The SDN concept is explained in a very refined way, where the SDN components are also presented with their respective roles and characteristics.

When presenting the programmable network components, the main focus is on the OpenFlow model which has minimum requirements to allow proper network programmability. Other network controllers such as NOX, FML, Frenetic, Onix, Trema, and Maestro are also presented as interesting alternatives to the most popular one for research: POX.

SDN applicabilities are also presented, being software-defined networks applicable for access control lists, network management, distributed virtual switches, and many other possibilities yet to be explored.

This article definitely provides an important contribution on presenting many different aspects of SDNs, their challenges and the main components of this new paradigm that is so promising.