Harnessing Open Source Orchestration and Control Plane Software with Data Plane Hardware to Create a Networking Solution
Today’s SDN network architects are now able to source open hardware and software that is beginning to meet the various needs of their architectures. They can identify specific areas of their network where SDN can bring a significant advantage over existing networking strategies. In turn, SDN vendors have responded with products that allow architects to incrementally add SDN to their networks in some form or another. All the while the open source software community is making significant progress of its own.
So the building blocks are increasingly available but the full blueprint of actually implementing a networking solution is still very murky. We come across this all the time and usually end up taking our customers on a deep-dive review of the various open source orchestration and control plane options, for what applications they are best suited, and how they can be coupled with SDN hardware to create innovative, deployable networking solutions.
For network architects and operators, it’s tough to know the pros and cons of each open-source offering and what is most suitable for a given application: ONF Atrium BGP peering, OpenDaylight (ODL) Beryllium ecosystem, ONOS, SDN-IP, FAUCET and the Ryu Framework among others.
Over time, we have developed SDN expertise in understanding the open source offerings and how they tie into the full blueprint of deploying at-scale SDN/NFV solutions in advanced network architectures. Stay tuned for focus pieces on the various open-source controllers and how they can help. In the meantime, let us know if we can work with you to develop your SDN blueprint.
Related Articles
SDN World Congress featured Transport SDN and a whole lot of NFV
I just got back from a week in The Hague as both an attendee and an exhibitor at the 5th annual SDN World Congress. My first observation is that the name of this show struggles to keep up with what’s actually happening Read more
Taking Performance SDN and Making it Real
Google “SDN” and you’ll find a number of excellent resources like this page on Tech Target’s SearchSDN that explain the key objective of software-defined networking is to deliver cost-effective automated orchestration of networks that matches the level of automation and performance in cloud computing. But that’s a philosophy, not a solution. Read more
The Challenge (Not Difficulty) of Hardening Open Source SDN Software
Gartner’s Andrew Lerner, who covers enterprise networking products including SDN, participated in a session on SDN at the most recent Gartner IOM conference in Orlando. Read more
