I'm surprised at myself for discovering this almost 9 months late!! I'm truly slipping on my Technology Current Affairs!!!
But this one has me really excited, not so much about the novelty, but the sheer possibilities.
The concept is Open Networking and the basic premise is extending the Open Source philososphy to Networking!! Oh, by the way, that's Computer Networking, before you start to get your business cards out!! Just like the sotware industry was dominated by closed source proprietory developers like Microsoft and essentially the need was felt to free up the source code for various applications so that users could modify it freely to suit their own specific needs, giving birth to the Open Source Initiative.
Sooner or later, industry innovators started to think about bringing this Open Source story to the hardware market, dominated by large manufacturers like IBM and Cisco. Welcome to Open Source Hardware and Open Source Networking.
Now while a number of manufacturers are working on the Open Source Initiative in Hardware, open source Networking has been mostly dealing with networking hardware which ws powered by open source code. A good example is Netgear's Open Source Wireless Router. The box is still designed and manufactured by Netgear and the running OS is open source.
Enter Vyatta. What makes this offering different is that they decouple the firmware from the underlying hardware. Essentially this is a "software router". To explain this, imagine that you could take a PC with two network interfaces and convert it into a router. Better still, forget the PC, you can make the router "virtual" just like a virtual machine..... and then you could also have the option of buying the hardware box and seting it up, if you like to touch your router for reassurance.
Now let's see the implication of this in a Datacenter. Prehistorically, one would have multiple servers cascading onto a switch in the rack which would then connect to the router. Hardware evolved and Virtual servers came along, with one hypervisor connecting to all these multiple servers which were physically not there!!! However you still could not escape the cabling of the hypervisor to the switch (which essentially served the consolidation function) and then the router.
Now, you can connect the WAN line directly to the hypervisor, put the router into the virtual server cluster and eliminate the physical switch alltogether!! Lower power consumption, lower capital cost, lower wiring mess and lower management complexity!!! WOW or what???
Now the fun part!! Tux, the penguin mascot for Linux, Open source's best known posterchild, is always taking potshots at Microsoft Windows!!! Case in point is the picture!!!
Open source networking seems to be going the same way, with Vyatta taking on none other than Cisco!!! Vyatta claims that its open source router is better in value than Cisco's offerings in the same space. Now in the world of Networking, this is blasphemy!! Well, click on the image below:
But this one has me really excited, not so much about the novelty, but the sheer possibilities.
The concept is Open Networking and the basic premise is extending the Open Source philososphy to Networking!! Oh, by the way, that's Computer Networking, before you start to get your business cards out!! Just like the sotware industry was dominated by closed source proprietory developers like Microsoft and essentially the need was felt to free up the source code for various applications so that users could modify it freely to suit their own specific needs, giving birth to the Open Source Initiative.
Sooner or later, industry innovators started to think about bringing this Open Source story to the hardware market, dominated by large manufacturers like IBM and Cisco. Welcome to Open Source Hardware and Open Source Networking.
Now while a number of manufacturers are working on the Open Source Initiative in Hardware, open source Networking has been mostly dealing with networking hardware which ws powered by open source code. A good example is Netgear's Open Source Wireless Router. The box is still designed and manufactured by Netgear and the running OS is open source.
Enter Vyatta. What makes this offering different is that they decouple the firmware from the underlying hardware. Essentially this is a "software router". To explain this, imagine that you could take a PC with two network interfaces and convert it into a router. Better still, forget the PC, you can make the router "virtual" just like a virtual machine..... and then you could also have the option of buying the hardware box and seting it up, if you like to touch your router for reassurance.
Now let's see the implication of this in a Datacenter. Prehistorically, one would have multiple servers cascading onto a switch in the rack which would then connect to the router. Hardware evolved and Virtual servers came along, with one hypervisor connecting to all these multiple servers which were physically not there!!! However you still could not escape the cabling of the hypervisor to the switch (which essentially served the consolidation function) and then the router.
Now, you can connect the WAN line directly to the hypervisor, put the router into the virtual server cluster and eliminate the physical switch alltogether!! Lower power consumption, lower capital cost, lower wiring mess and lower management complexity!!! WOW or what???
Now the fun part!! Tux, the penguin mascot for Linux, Open source's best known posterchild, is always taking potshots at Microsoft Windows!!! Case in point is the picture!!!
Open source networking seems to be going the same way, with Vyatta taking on none other than Cisco!!! Vyatta claims that its open source router is better in value than Cisco's offerings in the same space. Now in the world of Networking, this is blasphemy!! Well, click on the image below:
This is big!!! With the current recession on, there is no way that Vyatta's position on costs won't impress. Also this brings "Technology Equity" in the market, where small and medium businesses can now afford Cisco offered features minus the premium price tag!!!
Wait and watch!!!!
Wait and watch!!!!
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