# Call for Papers - SOSR 2021

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 in virtually all networking areas, and 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.

Software-defined networking can be considered as an example of the more general software-defined framework, including software-defined storage, software-defined radio, among others, to become the more general, powerful SDx framework.

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. SOSR 2021 will be fully virtual on September 20 & 21, 2021.

We invite submissions from researchers and practitioners on a wide range of related areas on SDN in particular and SDx in general, 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

We will consider both long and short previously unpublished papers, choosing the length appropriate to the level of completeness and detail in the work. We invite both traditional research papers and Experience and Challenge papers.

Experience and Challenge papers: Given that 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.

In addition to traditional research papers and Experience and Challenge papers, we also seek (both long and short) 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

## 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 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 '21 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.

Please direct any submission-related questions to sosr2021tpc@gmail.com.
Please direct any general suggestions and questions to the general chair Lihua Yuan; any technical program suggestions and questions to the TPC co-chairs Y. Richard Yang and Ying Zhang.

## Submission site:

Please visit https://sosr21.hotcrp.com to submit.

## Important Dates

Paper submission: | June 18, 2021 (AoE)
Notification: | August 1, 2021
Camera-ready due: | August 22, 2021
Fully Virtual Conference: | October 11 & 12, 2021