Demand is growing to develop the capability to support end-to-end services, capable of spanning multiple Software Defined Networking (SDN) domains. SDN deployments that cross multiple domains continue to be constructed manually, involving significant coordination and effort by network operators. Moreover, the demand for more intelligent network services to support the evolving science research and education activities between the U.S. and South America are increasing; these network services, which include dynamic provisioning of end-to-end multi-domain layer2 circuits, and network programmability, are needed to foster innovation for application developers, and to increase efficiency for network operators. AtlanticWave-SDX is a response to the demand for more intelligent network services to foster innovation and to increase network efficiency.Florida International University (FIU) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) are implementing AtlanticWave-SDX: a distributed experimental Software-Defined Exchange (SDX), supporting research, experimental deployments, prototyping and interoperability testing, on national and international scales. A Software-Defined Exchange (SDX) will provide a capability to prototype an OpenFlow network where members of each Internet peering fabric could exchange traffic based in different layers of abstraction. AtlanticWave-SDX is comprised of two components: (1) a network infrastructure development component to bridge 100G of network capacity between Research and Education (R&E) backbone networks in the U.S. and South America; and (2) an innovation component to build a distributed intercontinental experimental SDX between the U.S. and South America, by leveraging open exchange point resources at SoX (Atlanta), AMPATH (Miami), and Southern Light (São Paulo, Brazil).
