Open Network Featured Article

It has been a significant month for open networking and software-defined applications and one of the key announcements was SNAS.io joining The Linux Foundation’s (News - Alert) Networking and Orchestration umbrella. The Streaming Analytics System (SNAS) open source networking project, previously known as OpenBMP, uses open source code to capture Border Gateway (News - Alert) Protocol (BGP) telemetry data. It’s a critical feature for web-scale networks, enabling service providers, carriers and enterprises to analyze and monitor routing data in real time.

The project collects network data from layer 2 and layer 3, which includes IP information, quality of service requests and specifics about physical network components and devices. Since data is collected and analyzed in real time, network operators may better automate infrastructure management while gleaning value from analyzing giant volumes of data. The offering comes with an application for storing data in a MySQL database, but users may also access data at the messagebus layer using the Kafka customizable topic structure or through the project’s RESTful database API service.

"There is a lot of potential linking SNAS.io and other Linux Foundation projects such as PNDA, FD.io, Cloud Foundry, OPNFV, ODL and ONAP that we’re integrating to evolve open networking,” said David Ward, SVP, CTO of Engineering and Chief Architect, Cisco (News - Alert). We look forward to working with The Linux Foundation and the NetDev community to deploy and extend SNAS.io.”

One of the cornerstones of open networking is shifting the intelligence, automation and management capabilities from hardware to software running on bare metal white boxes. That’s the model that Pica8 has built its PicOS OpenFlow-based operating system on, offering customers a way to re-architect their networks for open source without ripping out boxes and switches. The company’s CrossFlow capability lets users apply OpenFlow rules to traditional layer 2 and layer 3, enabling open source and SDN capabilities without the need to disrupt or replace network components.

Built on an unmodified Debian Linux kernel, PicOS supports BGP at layer 3, making it an attractive choice for service providers and carriers looking for scalability, load sharing and mobility. The SNAS.io project makes BGP data that much more valuable for network analysis and monitoring, making the standard an established complement to SDN and open networking architectures.