The networking industry is moving faster than ever before. The reason to expedite the pace lies in the network device disaggregation which leads to the evolution of the white box switch concept. What enables the network disaggregation? What are the problems with traditional networking? Let us look at it in the discourse ahead.
The networking industry has seen the era of tightly coupled software and hardware components of the network devices. The companies develop their own network operating system and integrate it with the underlying network silicon’s software stack (SDK). It takes a collaborative effort for the silicon vendor and OEM vendor to make a complete network switch product. There is more effort involved to integrate the silicon vendor SDK and own Network Operating System (NOS). This can be called as an aggregated network device where the switch software is tightly coupled and non-scalable. The product supply chain is own by the company.