JR Rivers once built networking gear for Google. And he'll tell you about it.
For years, Google successfully kept a cone of silence around its efforts to fashion a new breed of network switch that could more efficiently shuttle information across the massive data centers that underpin its web empire. It still won't discuss the particulars of this hardware, but Rivers is one of the few voices willing to provide a small window into what the company has done with its computer networks -- and why.
He spent only a handful of months at the company in 2005, but he was there long enough to understand its motivations. Google's operation had grown so large, he says, it needed to reduce the cost of its networking gear, but also to find a more effective means of managing that gear. "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," Rivers 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."
Now, Rivers is working to solve this same problem for the rest of the world. This week, his new company, Silicon Valley startup Cumulus Networks, formally unveiled software that seeks to streamline computer networking in much the same way Google has done. And unlike Google's networking creations, this software is available to anyone.
Based on the popular Linux open source operating system that runs on so many of the computer servers that drive the world wide web, the software is called Cumulus Linux. But it doesn't run on servers. It runs on networking switches. "We believe that the networking industry is ready for what he called the Linux revolution," Rivers says.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, he explains, Linux significantly reduced the cost and the hassle of deploying and managing computer servers. Now, he and Cumulus are using the open source operating system to do much the same thing with networking gear. The company's efforts are part of a larger trend toward software that seeks liberate the world's networking gear. Outfits such as Pica8 and Big Switch Networks and Nicira (now part of VMware) have taken similar paths. The difference is that Cumulus has put its faith in Linux.
According to Jonathan LaCour, vice president product and development at Dreamhost, a cloud computing outfit that uses Cumulus Linux, this new networking operating systems lets the company manage its computer servers as well as its networking gear from the same central software. "We can have this unified system," he says, "for managing all of our gear."
The operating system runs on what's called "bare metal" networking switches -- switches that come without any software running on them. Some of the bigger web companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have long purchased such commodity switches from Asia so they could run their own software on them. Cumulus is one of several companies that are trying to facilitate a supply between smaller companies and the original design manufacturers, or ODMs, that sell these switches.
Cumulus is working with Taiwanese ODM Accton, among others, to ensure buyers can purchase its software and the hardware needed to run it. "We think that the use of Linux will lead to a much broader adoption in the market," says George Tchaparian, senior vice president of engineering and chief technology officer at Accton. Basically, Accton will sell its switches directly to customer, then Cumulus will supply the software. But the two companies say they work together to ensure the two pieces of technology works together.
In many ways, the setup is a set beyond the Google model. Google, after all, employs people like JR Rivers to design its networking hardware and software. Now Rivers is paving the way to hardware and software that lets you streamline your operation without hiring people like him.
