Exploring the history of programmable networks and looking at those used in the present day

Several years have passed since programmable networks were initially conceived by engineers, so let’s touch on a few historical milestones before we get into the current technologies.

Active networking

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) began funding research in the mid-1990s to create a network that could easily be changed and customized by programming, called the active networking project. The main goal of the project was to create network technologies that, in contrast to then-current networks, were easy to innovate and evolve, allowing fast application and protocol development.

But it was not easy to create such a flexible network in the 1990s because programming languages, signaling and network protocols, and operating systems were not mature enough to accommodate such innovative ideas. For instance, operation systems were monolithic and adding features...