A New Open Data Center Network: Disaggregating the Network Operating System from Switch/Router Gear

Introduction: SDN proponents cite the proprietary, closed and tightly integrated hardware/software architectures of switch/routers being an impediment towards achieving network agility, more efficient bandwidth utilization, and lower costs.  That’s because those boxes are complex, aren’t generally inter-operable with other vendor gear, and are almost impossible to control using external software. With more intelligence built into silicon from companies like Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, and others, there are fewer advantages of the proprietary, vertically integrated switch/ routers, which enjoy very high profit margins (for vendors like Cisco, Juniper, Brocade and even Arista Networks).   And those L2/L3 network fabrics can’t be easily controlled by external software to meet the needs of the applications that use them for connectivity. James Hamilton, Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services wrote in a blog post last week: “Because networking gear is complex and, despite them all implementing the same RFCs, equipment from different vendors (and sometimes the same vendor) still interoperates poorly. It’s very hard to deliver reliable networks at controllable administration costs from multiple vendors freely mixing and matching. The customer is locked in, the vendors know it, and the network equipment prices reflect that realization. Not only is networking gear expensive absolutely but the relative [...]