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• Call for Papers
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Call for Papers - SOSR 2020

More than 10 years have now elapsed since the beginning of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Over the course of a decade, SDN has fueled incredible innovation, revolutionizing virtually all networking areas. SDN is now deployed in a growing number of production and experimental settings, including data centers, enterprise networks, content providers, and Internet Service Providers.

At its core, SDN is all about making programming networks as easy as programming computers. Through programming interfaces and programmable substrates, SDN enables specifying and provisioning network-wide forwarding behaviors, as well as adapting how the network hardware itself forwards traffic. SDN has enabled more flexible and predictable network control, made it easier to extend the network with new functionality, and made it possible to verify the correctness of networking behaviors.

The ACM SIGCOMM Symposium on SDN Research (SOSR) is the premiere venue for research publications on SDN, building on past years' successful SOSR and HotSDN (Hot Topics in Software Defined Networking) workshops. New to this year, SOSR will be co-­located with the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit on March 3, 2020 in San Jose, CA.to foster interaction between academic and industrial attendees.

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit both long and short previously unpublished papers, choosing the length appropriate to the level of completeness and detail in the work. We particularly encourage position papers, radical ideas, and papers on real applications and experiences of SDN.

We invite submissions on a wide range of research on the broad area of software-defined, programmable networks, including, but not limited to:

• Software-defined, programmable control plane applications
  • Network scenarios of home, wireless, cellular, enterprise, backbone, Internet-of-Things, and content distribution networks
  • Different general networking tasks including management, monitoring, security, and privacy, etc
  • Virtualized network functions (e.g., firewalls, intrusion detection systems, load balancers)
  • Network Virtualization
• Software-defined, programmable data plane applications
  • Programmable switches, SmartNICs, FPGAs, kernel or network stack bypass, and other network hardware accelerators
  • In-network compute or storage to accelerate networking workloads or application demands (e.g. P4-based solutions, hybrid compute/networking ecosystems, etc)
  • Novel network architectures and building blocks (e.g., programmable topologies, bandwidth variable links, optical networks)
  • White-box and bare-metal switching
• Foundations of programmable network deployments and related applications
  • Programming languages, compilers, verification and testing techniques in SDN
  • The design and application of useful SDN tools
  • Novel techniques for improving the security, reliability, performance, and scalability of SDN architectures
• Applications of SDN in home, wireless, cellular, enterprise, datacenter, backbone, Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, and content distribution networks
• Applications of SDN to networks and co-deployed technologies (e.g. Cyber-Physical Systems, transportation or autonomous technologies, smart cities/buildings, or physical sensors such as video cameras and environmental sensors)
• Applications of SDN to content-centric networking, computational workflows, etc.
• Applications of SDN at the physical layer
• Incremental deployment of SDN into operational networks along with experiences deploying SDN technology and applications in operational networks
• Integration of SDN into open-source compute ecosystems

In addition to traditional research papers, we also seek papers that present:

• Surveys of important SDN concepts, techniques, and standards
• Technical overviews of larger research projects, production systems, and use cases
• Open-source benchmark suites or measurement data for evaluating SDN systems

New This Year: Experience and Challenge Submissions

In addition to traditional research papers, this year the SOSR Organizing Committee is excited to announce the solicitation of Experience and Challenge papers. Given SDN has been successfully deployed in a variety of production environments, “Experience” papers detailing, evaluating, or providing a retrospective of the practical impacts of SDN deployments will be of great use to the scientific community. And while SDN technologies are currently deployed in production environments, the promise of software-driven networking remains large. As such, “Challenge” papers outlining the next steps, challenges, or radical ideas for software-driven networking and systems will also be requested. Both long and short Challenge and Experience papers are invited.

Submission Instructions

Submissions must be original, unpublished work, and not under consideration at another conference or journal. Each submission must be a single PDF file in two ­columns, 10­ point format following the sigconf format of the 2017 ACM Master Article LaTeX Template Use the sample latex file sample-sigconf.tex. Submitted short papers should be no longer than six (6) pages, and long papers no longer than twelve (12) pages, including all material except references. SOSR '20 is double-blind, meaning that authors should make a good faith effort to anonymize papers. Papers should be submitted electronically via the submission site.

Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library. We stress that the publication of short papers at SOSR does not preclude the later publication of a full-­length version of the paper at a conference or in a journal. Authors of accepted papers are expected to present their papers at the symposium and will have the opportunity to present a poster/demo at an interactive session, co-­located with OCP.

Please direct any submission-related questions to sosr2020tpc@gmail.com.

Submission site:

Please visit https://sosr20.hotcrp.com to submit.

Important Dates

Call for Demos and Posters - SOSR 2020

The ACM Symposium on SDN Research (SOSR) demos and posters session showcases research projects current that are in an early stage and could benefit from community feedback. Topics of interest are the same as research topics in the SOSR call for papers. We particularly invite the submission of emerging results in SDN research that address timely problems, that can help evolve the landscape of SDN, that enhance our understanding of how SDN work in real-world deployments or realistic test beds, or that could influence further applied research and experimentation in industry. The SOSR 2020 Demos and Posters committee will review all proposals.

All demos will be provided with table space, an external display, a poster board and wireless Internet access by default. The demos should be configured to run in a cloud environment accessible via Internet and presented from the exhibition space floor on the demonstrator's laptop. Any additional needs (beyond the defaults: table, monitor, Internet) such as equipment for the demo, required setup time or additional facilities must be requested with submission.

If you have interesting early-stage work, which has not yet evolved into a fully-fledged demo, please consider submitting a poster proposal

What is a poster?

We expect both poster and demo presenters to prepare a poster. A poster is A0 paper size in portrait mode (841 × 1189mm), to which you can affix visually appealing material that describes your research. Alternatively, you can use the space as a continuum. You should prepare the best material (visually appealing and succinct) that effectively communicates your research problem, techniques, results, and what is novel/important about the work. You do not submit such a large-format image; only an abstract describing in text what the poster would present.

What to submit

Please submit your demo or poster proposal in the form of a two-page abstract in PDF. The abstract should clearly state: (a) the problem being addressed, (b) what makes this problem interesting, important, and challenging, (c) your approach to the problem, and (d) the key contributions.

If you are submitting a demo, you should also include a video clip showcasing the work, in addition to the abstract. The video should be no more than 3 minutes and should give a good idea of what the demo is about and what it would look like. A link to the video should be included in the abstract PDF.

Prepare your abstract using the 10­ point format following the 2017 ACM SIG LaTeX style file. Use the sample latex file sample-sigconf.tex. Word documents will not be accepted. The abstracts of accepted posters and demos will be available to all attendees at the conference.

Students who are submitting demos/posters are highly encouraged to examine if they are eligible for student travel grants. The submission link will be available shortly.

Where to submit

Please visit https://sosr20posters.hotcrp.com/ to submit. Submissions are single blind, so please include authors' names and affiliation.

Important Dates

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