DukeNet Communications is conducting a proof-of-concept demonstration for software defined network (SDN) orchestration across a wide area network (WAN) and a data center.

The telco, which Time Warner Cable bought from Duke Energy for US$600m in October, is using technology by networking companies Cyan and Accedian to conduct the demo. In it, applications running on an enterprise server dynamically place requests for additional cloud ata center virtual machines and associated network resources using OpenStack APIs (application programming interfaces) and OpenFlow across the DukeNet network.

David Herran, VP of network architecture and technology planning at DukeNet, said the demonstration showed that the company could dynamically spin up VMs along with virtualized network resources for customers. “This capability ultimately will allow us to offer new, flexible, and elastic services to customers and will provide an important new means to monetize our network investment,” he said.

Cyan's Blue Planet SDN Platform services the request on behalf of network resources and proxies the compute and data center network demands to an OpenStack server in the cloud data center. Blue Planet performs all functions necessary to turn up additional services across DukeNet's network, including carrier Ethernet and optical edge devices from Accedian Networks.

The data center instance of OpenStack negotiates with compute resources and data center switches to allocate the necessary network and compute capacity.

Cyan president and co-founder Michael Hatfield said, “The carrier space is looking for proof that SDN can help them create new services and reduce costs. At the same time, enterprise customers are looking for networks that are as elastic as their data center and compute resources.

“This demonstration goes a long way in proving that these types of services can be realized through SDN technology.”