OpenFlow

Dell this week extended its data center networking portfolio with a new top-of-rack switch and plans to extend OpenFlow support for software-defined networking across its product line.

Juniper Networks Executive Vice President Bob Muglia spelled it out succinctly: the nascent software-defined networking market is morphing into three camps - OpenFlow/open source, Cisco and VMware.

OpenFlow controller start-up Big Switch Networks this week said it closed a $25 million Series B funding round to continue the expansion of the engineering, sales and marketing operations.

Internet2 is nearing completion of its OpenFlow-enabled 100G Ethernet software-defined network for testing service delivery of applications for Big Data compilation and research, among others.

You can gauge the promise of an emerging technology by the reaction of the biggest legacy player potentially threatened by the new arrival. It walks a fine line between jumping in too quickly and sanctioning a nascent movement that may not otherwise get off the ground, and reacting too slowly and losing advantage to fleet-footed upstarts.

APIs and messaging protocols, including some that are standards, can let users build software-defined networks today. The key issue, though, is that not everyone implements the same ones or implements them the same way. Will OpenFlow get us all on the same path to SDN nirvana?

Interop 2011 could have been called The OpenFlow Show. Vendors were hawking OpenFlow switches and controllers, and a lab demonstration on the show floor displayed the traffic management technique and applicability among multivendor switches.