Thursday, September 3, 2015

New Networking Trends


In the not-too-distant past, the networking industry focused a lot on hardware speeds and feeds. Networking gear was judged on how many packets it could process per second and how many ports per device. Today, the industry's focus is shifting to software, code, and open systems.
Software-defined networking, while still far from mainstream, is slowly making inroads into the enterprise. A survey of 153 midsize and large North American enterprises by Infonetics Research, now part of IHS Inc., found that 79% plan to have SDN in live production in their data centers by 2017. Garter predicts that by the end of next year, more than 10,000 enterprises will have deployed SDN in their networks.
Along with SDN, there's a lot of talk about open standards, open protocols and open systems. One aspect of the open networking movement continues to gain momentum as the number of alternatives to proprietary switches with tightly integrated software and hardware grow.
The Facebook-led Open Compute Project has helped lead the charge towards disaggregating the network. The social media giant recently proposed a specification for its open Wedge top-of-rack switch to OCP, and Accton Technology's Edge-Core subsidiary is offering a TOR switch based on the Wedge design. Meanwhile, HP is partnering with Accton and Cumulus Networks on its new line of open network switches, which HP says gives customers a choice of hardware and software on branded switches with HP support.
Infonetics expects the white-box switch trend to make big strides over the next few years as more companies seek the agility and flexibility demonstrated by Internet giants like Facebook and Google. The firm forecasts that bare-metal switches will make up nearly a quarter of all data center ports shipped worldwide in 2019, up from 11% last year.
While a lot of conversations in networking revolve around open networking, SDN and network automation, networking professionals are delving into many other areas. Enterprises are migrating to the 802.11ac WiFi standard and the transition to IPv6 continues to loom.
All these networking trends will be featured at Interop Las Vegas April 27 to May 1. Continue on to find out what you can expect to learn at Interop and what networking luminaries will share their views on the technologies poised to radically change the networking landscape.

Article by: Marcia Savage is the managing editor for Network Computing, and has been covering technology for 15 years. She has written and edited for CRN and spent several years covering information security for SC Magazine and TechTarget.

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