There is a widespread impression in the network engineering world that centralized control planes are simpler than distributed control planes. This impression often drives the perception of the future of network engineering and design in a way that favors centralized controller based systems over more traditional distributed control planes. This session will investigate this claim by considering centralized and distributed control planes in the light of two models; a network complexity model, and the CAP theorem. The proposed outcome is a more realistic view of complexity in centralized systems, and a possible way forward in thinking through where each kind of control plane is useful.
