Articulated private networks in UCLP

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the advantages of using the UCLP software for network operators, advanced and regular end users in the research networking community. Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides an example of the deployment of UCLP in the GÉANT2/National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) scenario, and compares how network operators, advanced users and regular end users would do their work, with and without UCLP. Findings – The paper provides high‐level technical information about UCLP as well as depicting the drivers for its use in the European research networking community. Research limitations/implications – This paper does not explain the details of the deployment of the software in the GÉANT2/National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) scenario, it just explains the benefits that the deployment of the software would provide. If the deployment was to be done today, some improvements to UCLP should be done, as well as support for more equipment vendors should be added. Practical implications – UCLP could provide more flexibility to the e‐science community if it was deployed over the European research networking infrastructure, because it would isolate network users from each other while providing them an unprecedented degree of control over the network. Originality/value – Nowadays, several control/management solutions for networks exist, but none that is capable of partitioning a physical network into slices and handoff its management to the users, like UCLP does. This is the first UCLP paper that studies a hypothetical deployment of UCLP in the European research networking scenario, and evaluates the drivers and implications of such a deployment.