When photos of Google's mystery "Pluto Switch" appeared on the web early last year, it seemed like something from another world -- and not just because Google called it the Pluto Switch.
Yes, it was a networking switch -- a means of connecting machines inside the massive data centers that drive Google's sweeping online empire. But it was loaded with networking ports no one had seen before. It ran a new breed of software. And it wasn't sold by the big-name American tech giants that supply most of the world's networking gear. It wasn't sold by Cisco or HP or Juniper or Dell. Google, you see, designs its own networking gear, in much the same way it designs its own servers, storage gear, and data centers.
But as alien as the Pluto Switch may seem at first glance, it's very much a sign of things to come. The world of computer networking is slowly moving in the direction of Google's mystery device, and on Tuesday, it took another step down this road, when a Silicon Valley startup called Big Switch Networks unveiled a new piece of software for running networking hardware inside the data center.
Google builds its own networking gear because traditional networking switches and routers are too expensive and too difficult to use. When you operate such an enormous online empire, you're all the more interested in cutting costs, but you also need more control over your equipment.
>'There's a gap between someone getting a crazy idea for what they want to do with their network and us being able to get the right software into their hands. We want to accelerate that process.'
Rob Sherwood
"When Google looked at their network, they needed high-bandwidth connections between their servers and they wanted to be able to manage things -- at scale," JR Rivers, an engineer who worked on Google's first custom-built networking switches, told us last year. "With the traditional enterprise networking vendors, they just couldn’t get there. The cost was too high, and the systems were too closed to be manageable on a network of that size."
For the same reasons, the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are also moving away from traditional networking hardware. They're not designing their own switches a la Google, but they are buying dirt-cheap "white box" switches, straight from little-known manufacturers in Asia. These switches don't just cut your costs: Much like Google's Pluto Switch, they can also accomodate a new breed of software -- software that gives you added control over your network.
The rub is you still have to build this software -- and that's no easy task. But it's getting easier. On Tuesday, Big Switch unveiled what you might call an operating system for these white-box switches, and this operating system is equipped for OpenFlow, the open source networking protocol championed by Google, Facebook and other web giants. You can think of OpenFlow as a way of programming your networking gear in much the same way you program your computer servers or desktop machines or smartphones.
Based on an existing open source project known as Indigo, this new operating system is known as Switch Light. It's not yet available to the world at large, but Big Switch is privately testing the software inside large web companies and financial houses, and it plans to release a public version in the second half of the year. The plan is backed by two Asian companies that can sell you white-box switches: Quanta and Accton.
Big Switch already offers a network controller that lets you oversee networking switches equipped for the OpenFlow protocol, and it provides a development platform for building additional software that runs atop the controller. The new operating system, the company says, is meant to drive the use of this existing software. Big Switch will provide Switch Light for free, and if you use it in tandem with the company's other tools, it will provide technical support as well.
"There's a gap between someone getting a crazy idea for what they want to do with their network and us being able to get the right software into their hands," says Big Switch chief technology officer Rob Sherwood. "We want to accelerate that process."
Other companies offer software that helps run white-box switches, including Cumulus Networks, an outfit founded by ex-Google engineer Rivers, and Pica8, a startup funded by Quanta. But in adding OpenFlow to such gear, Big Switch is taking the trend a step further.
In essence, OpenFlow lets you write your own networking software rather than relying on proprietary tools that traditionally drives networking switches. "It’s essentially a transition from something that is closed to a very open ecosystem," says Big Switch founder Guido Appenzeller. "It’s like the transition from those Nokia cellphones of 10 years ago -- or, before that, from the mainframe." Urs Hölzle -- the man who oversees Google's data center empire -- has called the technology the most significant change to the computer-networking game since he joined the company more than a decade ago.
Google now uses OpenFlow to shuttle data between its massive data centers, and many of the big-name hardware sellers are now behind the technology, including Cisco, Juniper, HP and Dell. Shashi Kiran -- a senior director of market management for data centers at Cisco -- tells us that the hardware maker is developing a wide variety of OpenFlow switches, and though these are not yet publicly available, he says, the company offers software that lets you add OpenFlow to existing switches.
Big Switch is already working hand-in-hand with some of these hardware makers -- including Dell and Extreme Networks -- in an effort to speed the adoption of OpenFlow, but the startup feels the commercial market has been too slow to adopt the technology. Thus the new switch operating system. "We're trying to catalyze the market," says Andrew Harding, senior director of product marketing at Big Switch. "A number of vendors have released their first OpenFlow switches, but the rate of innovation is just too slow."
Anshul Sadana, who oversees customer engineering at Arista Networks, another startup working to overhaul the world's networks, says much the same thing, and like Big Switch, Artista is working to change this. It now offers "beta test" versions of high-speed OpenFlow switches, and it plans on offering these to a wider audience as well. The difference is that Big Switch is offering an open source operating system that will work with hardware from myriad manufacturers.
In offering its new switch operating system, Big Switch may strain its relationship with various hardware partners, including Arista. But the company is just pushing the market in the direction it's already moving. As we heard last year from James Liao -- a former Quanta employee who now runs Pica8 -- Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook are buying white-box switches from Asia. And Big Switch says it's working with various companies -- including large web outfits and big Wall Street financial houses -- that have specifically asked for OpenFlow software that runs on white-box switches.
>'To be perfectly frank, they're pulling us into this. We didn't expect to be doing this so fast.'
Andrew Harding
"To be perfectly frank," Harding says, "they're pulling us into this. We didn't expect to be doing this so fast."
This is all part of a much larger movement, with many of the big-name web companies as well as financial giants like Goldman Sachs and other outfits going straight to Asian manufacturers for all sorts of hardware that's better suited to their massive online operations. This includes servers, storage gear, hardware racks, and more.
In some ways, this is about removing the middleman. The hardware sold by the likes of Dell and Cisco is built by those same Asian manufacturers. But in moving to Asia, the giants of the web are also looking for a new breed of hardware and software that better suits their needs.
OpenFlow certainly fits the bill. The protocol grew out of research at North California's Stanford University about a half decade ago, and Big Switch co-founder Appenzeller oversaw the Stanford lab where the open source project was gestated.
According to Rob Sherwood -- another Stanford researcher who joined Big Switch -- the Stanford team originally built Indigo as a means of demonstrating OpenFlow. They would order white-box switches from Quanta, pick them up on the docks in Oakland, California, and load them with the open source platform. The software wasn't envisioned as a product per se, but that's what it has become.
Some organizations, including other universities, have used Indigo on live networks, and now, Big Switch is refining this open source tool for use on some of the largest networks on earth. This is sure to upset some of the market's entrenched hardware sellers, but so be it.
"At Big Switch, Indigo was always a little bit of an eye raiser for our hardware partners," Sherwood says. "It always made them a little uncomfortable. But at the same time, everyone understands the utility of this. And so many of our customers want it. The writing is on the wall."
Update: This story originally said that the Canadian hardware maker Celestica was backing Big Switch's new software, but Big Switch has now backed off this claim.
