Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Pronto Systems

Pronto Systems is offering a super low cost 48x1G + 4x10G ethernet switch.  What is really interesting is Pronto's involvement in the Open Switch Software Alliance:
OSSA is Open Switch Software Architecture which aims to provide an open software environment to increase the flexibility and manageability of data centers. OSSA includes three system layers, including boot loader, operating system, and software application.
There is a lot of interesting working going on the the relatively boring ethternet switching space.

There is OpenFlow which can be described as an API for programming switches' data planes directly.

There is also the (seemingly similar) Open Networking Foundation, a consortium of large network operators created to develop a software defined network.

Brad Hedlund has a good discussion on what problems Open Flow is trying to solve and if they are even valid.

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