back to article HP flicks white box switch: NOT a Facebook wannabe? Stuff our open kit in your cloud

Less than a week after Cisco's John Chambers dismissed the “white box” switch category, HP has entered that market with its own open architecture switches. The company wants to start with “web scale” cloud operators who don't want to imitate Facebook or Google and run up their own systems from scratch. However, according to …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I love the idea of this, but I imagine it will end up with a shoddy open source clone of IOS for a number of years until the big boys start contributing their code for efficiency reasons like has happened with Linux in recent years. Switches have been disproportionately priced for what they offer for a long time compared to server hardware and I think Cisco and others are in for a shock once this builds momentum.

    1. Nate Amsden

      How is HP not a "big boy" in network switching? Last I recall they were a clear 2nd to Cisco, *way* ahead of any of the other players by double digit % market share.

      Not that I plan to use this, I am happy with my switching platform (not Cisco, and also not HP).

      1. Lusty

        Perhaps they were 2nd in numbers of units, but I certainly wouldn't consider them a serious network company and see very few core networks using HP switches. They are often used for ROBO and access switching due to cost though. They may even be second on revenue but then half of their network line up includes rebadged kit. I only used IOS as an example because most low end network pros learn via the Cisco exam route and hence know the command set. What I meant was that just as Linux used to completely mimic Windows, Mac and others this probably will too for a while.

    2. LindsayHill

      I would not describe it as a "shoddy open source clone of IOS" - there's a lot more going on here with Cumulus.

      L3 (BGP, OSPF, etc) is using Quagga, which is the only part that looks something like IOS. The rest of the configuration is mostly using standard Linux tools & configs, although Cumulus is improving some of this - see their work with ifupdown2. The good thing is that they're contributing this code back.

      In terms of speed/efficiency, core forwarding is still done using the same merchant silicon - i.e. it's not dependent upon software quality/efficiency.

      Disclaimer: I attended NFD9 last week, where Cumulus was presenting. They indirectly covered my costs to attend, but did not pay me.

  2. Terafirma-NZ

    as the hardware is the same why don't they just move their ProCurve OS onto this hardware and cut costs? Dell's version is just a standard Dell switch minus the Force10 OS.

    All we need now is to have all network vendors move this way and we can procure switches like we do servers.

  3. thegreatsatan

    How many bites at the apple do you get?

    Whats this the 3rd attempt by HP to do networking? Yeah good luck with that.

    HP has lost its way, they have all the potential growth in the Networking world as Netapp has in storage.

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