Arista heading off Cisco/Insieme at 100G SDNs?
Arista is raising the ante in high-density programmable core switching and perhaps setting the stage for things to come.
Stories by Jim Duffy
Brocade unleashes a datacentre barrage
Brocade this week extended its datacentre networking portfolio with hardware and software enhancements designed to better integrate and align physical and virtual resources.
HP refreshes data center core and aggregation with SDN switches
HP this week refreshed its switch line and fortified its SDN portfolio with three new systems and a router, along with management and provisioning software extensions.
Juniper switching boss talks technology challenges, Cisco Nexus 6000
Jonathan Davidson took over Juniper campus and data center switching when the two previously separate business units were combined following the departure of founding engineer R.K. Anand. Davidson has a service provider routing background at Juniper and Cisco, which is no coincidence -- after five years in switching, Juniper has been unable to mirror the success it had in its first five years in service provider routing. But it did start from zero and surpassed at least six other incumbent vendors to attain the No. 3 position in the market. The company has more than 20,000 switching customers cultivated through organic development, Davidson notes. And as Juniper moves forward amid a forklift upgrade facing its EX core switch base and after an initial misfire on the QFabric data center switch, it's focusing on customer demands for simplification, agility and automation. Davidson discussed some recent and future developments in Juniper enterprise switching.
Open Networking Foundation director details SDN directions
The third annual Open Networking Summit, an SDN conference organised by the Open Networking Foundation, convened this week just after ONF members Cisco and IBM unveiled a separate effort to define an open source SDN framework. Unlike the user-driven ONF, OpenDaylight is a vendor-driven project to cultivate a system of SDN applications, but it also raised suspicion of the group's real intent: Is it designed to stall SDN's momentum and the threat, real or perceived, it could pose to incumbent hardware vendors? ONF Executive Director Dan Pitt discussed some of these topics with Network World managing editor Jim Duffy at the Santa Clara, California conference.
Cisco extends Microsoft support in datacentre portfolio
Cisco last week extended its datacentre product line to support Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 hypervisor and VM management features to more tightly align their respective datacentre and Cloud architectures for joint customers.
Startup aims SDN technology at Cisco WANs
SDNs aren't just for data center networks, despite the best-use-case-scenario arguments for network virtualization and flow management pervading the industry.
Extreme, Brocade bring fabrics to the enterprise edge
Extreme Networks and Brocade this week separately announced products and strategies to tightly integrate IT resources in the enterprise campus.
Former switching chief McCool leaves Cisco
Cisco Senior Vice President John McCool, CTO of the enterprise segment and instrumental in data center fabric initiatives, has left the company after 17 years.
Move over SDN; startup looking to go where only Cisco, VMware tread
Software-defined network, software-defined datacentre ... and now software-defined fabric.
'Tsunami' of bandwidth demand pushes IEEE 400G Ethernet standards process
The IEEE this week launched a study group to explore development of a 400Gbps Ethernet standard to support booming demand for network bandwidth.
Juniper uncorks its core SDN switch earlier than expected
Earlier than expected, Juniper this week unveiled the EX9200 programmable core switch for 10G, 40G and 100Gbps software-defined networks.
Cisco lays off 500
Cisco this week reduced its workforce by about 500 people as the company realigns to face the advent of software-defined networking, cloud computing and its impact on routing and switching.
New Juniper SDN device portends forklift upgrades for core Ethernet switch
Any hopes Juniper EX8200 customers had that the core switch would grow to support next-generation 40/100G Ethernet, mobility, media-rich traffic, virtualization or cloud have been dashed.
Juniper to unveil programmable core switch for software-defined networking
Juniper Networks is readying a new programmable core switch to address software-defined networking in campuses and data centers.