The SDN Ecosystem
As a follow on to my blog about building a business case for an SDN deployment, there are now dozens of companies offering SDN-related products – so many that you might find it difficult to separate the hype from the meat. Let’s look at some categories of SDN products and how each of them fits into an overall SDN solution.
The key components of an SDN solution are ASICs, switches, a controller, and the applications or services that run over the network.
ASICs
ASICs have a long history in networking by driving scale and performance. In a clock cycle, very complex tasks can be accomplished. Without the ASIC, the central CPU would be overwhelmed performing those same tasks (remember those so called “one arm routers”). The need for ASICs created a new set of suppliers such as Broadcom, Marvell and Mellanox, and most recently Intel through its acquisition of Fulcrum. We can expect more and more specialization in ASICs as the industry pivots on the SDN theme. Over the last decade, the merchant silicon vendors have diversified and specialized products for vertical markets. For example, an ASIC optimized for the data center might have VxLAN support, while another tuned Continue reading