MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Big Switch Networks today announced that Project Floodlight has grown to be the world’s largest open source SDN community, already encompassing over 200,000 lines of code, 15,000 downloads of the Floodlight controller, and contains contributions from more than 10 ecosystem institutions and vendors around the world. Demonstrating a continued commitment to open source, Big Switch today also introduced a refreshed community project called Project Floodlight, retiring the OpenFlow Hub name. The updated open source community website replaces OpenFlowHub.org and is available ProjectFloodlight.org. Big Switch Networks open source community initiatives date back to Stanford University and the Clean Slate Project, which was led by the company’s CEO and co-founder, Guido Appenzeller.
Today’s announcement of Big Switch’s renewed open source approach was accompanied by the announcement of Switch Light (see related announcement), an industry-first thin switching software platform, which is based on Indigo, an open source project within Project Floodlight. The Indigo Project produces open source software that is used by developers and vendor partners to implement the OpenFlow protocol on physical and hypervisor switches, and forms the core of Switch Light. Indigo has been qualified to operate as a virtual switch in a variety of server hypervisors and in merchant silicon-based physical switching platforms, including so called “white box” switches. Merchant silicon-based switches are an increasingly important component of Open Software-Defined Networking (SDN). They liberate customers from historically proprietary, closed networking architectures, accelerating the adoption of OpenFlow-based networking, and providing customers a broad array of open-source SDN switching options that radically reduce cost of operations for software-defined networking. To date, Big Switch has used Indigo to assist numerous vendor partners to enable OpenFlow in their switches.
“Big Switch is a very strong believer and supporter of a community-powered approach to innovation,” said Guido Appenzeller, CEO and co-founder of Big Switch Networks. “The promise and the reality of SDN must be based on a truly open architecture. Our ongoing and expanding commitment to the open source SDN community will foster growth and innovation in SDN, as evidenced by the large and enthusiastic community formed and growing around Floodlight.”
A growing list of innovative users and ecosystem vendor partners around the world are building applications and deployments on open source SDN projects including the Floodlight controller and the Indigo OpenFlow agent.
6WIND
“Thanks to the large and growing community
around Floodlight as well as its support by Big Switch Networks, we have
selected it as the baseline controller for demonstrating our own
upcoming OpenFlow-based solutions,” said Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND.
“Customers typically use our 6WINDGate™ networking software in
conjunction with standards-based open-source platforms and will benefit
from the synergy between Big Switch’s products and ours.”
Canonical
"Ubuntu is the most popular platform for
OpenStack because of its ability to integrate cutting edge
technologies,” said Kyle MacDonald, Canonical VP of Cloud. “Our
enterprise and carrier customers are already demanding advanced
networking solutions based on open standards, so we are supportive of
Big Switch's commitment to Open SDN and Project Floodlight, as they
provide our customers the flexibility needed to build dynamic cloud
infrastructure while simplifying network operations."
Caltech/CERN
“We chose Floodlight because it is
represented by the largest open source community, and has a modular
architecture that makes it straightforward to customize,” Artur Barczyk,
senior engineer at CalTech. “At the same time, having Big Switch
Networks behind Floodlight gives us confidence in the future of the open
source project, support and a partner to address issues and work with on
a technical level.”
FireMon
"FireMon is a strong supporter of open source
and open standards in software-defined networks. We have been working
with Floodlight to demonstrate how security and risk analysis can be
tightly integrated into an open SDN,” said F. Ward Holloway III, vice
president of business development.
Overture
“Project Floodlight and the Indigo2 OpenFlow
framework helped Overture accelerate our development by offering robust,
industry leading open source software,” said Overture head of advanced
development, Bob Lynch. “We applaud the efforts of Big Switch and the
community supporting Floodlight and Indigo2 as they promote what has
become the SDN industry’s reference."
Radware
Radware’s SDN solutions allow software-defined
networks to easily provision and automate scalable L4-L7 applications
such as ADC and security solutions as wide network services. We are part
of and strongly support the open source communities, including Project
Floodlight, that allow customers to fully utilize innovative network and
application technologies,” said Avi Chesla, Radware CTO. “We chose the
Floodlight open source controller to work with our ADC and Security SDN
application to transform the network from a simple forwarding and
routing entity into a smart, application aware, routing layer. Open
standard initiatives are extremely important to provide customers
democratization in choosing the most relevant applications for their
business needs.”
SRI International, a research and innovation
center, is developing security enhancements to the Floodlight controller
for use in sensitive computing environments.
“When selecting an
Open Flow Controller to target for our security extension, SRI
researchers needed one that was well-engineered and broadly available.
Working with Big Switch, we are now building the tools that will allow
network operators to create more secure Open Flow networks,” said Phil
Porras, program director in the Computer Science Laboratory at SRI
International.
About Big Switch Networks
Big Switch Networks is the leader
in Open Software-Defined Networking. The company’s Open SDN
platform embraces industry standards, open APIs, open source, and
vendor-neutral support for both physical and virtual networking
infrastructure. Big Switch Networks Open SDN Suite supports a broad
range of networking applications, including network virtualization for
public and private cloud data centers built OpenStack, CloudStack and
other platforms. Big Switch Networks is privately held and has raised
over $45M from Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, Index Ventures, Khosla
Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and others. For additional
information follow us @bigswitch or visit: bigswitch.com
Big Switch Networks, Big Network Controller, Big Tap, Big Virtual Switch, Switch Light, Floodlight and Open SDN are trademarks or registered trademarks of Big Switch Networks, Inc. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.