
Azure Cloud Switch - insulanian
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-showcases-the-azure-cloud-switch-acs/
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WhitneyLand
Ya know, why do companies make you read three paragraphs before even
mentioning anything about what the thing actually is?

tldr: Microsoft is building a Linux based system to run network switches. This
is part of a trend in the industry that has been moving more network
intelligence into abstracted software rather than proprietary hardware.
Background: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-
defined_networking](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-
defined_networking)

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meta_pseudo
Interesting discussion in comments below the article about if this will open
sourced at some point in future. If I understand it correctly MS is not under
any obligation of open sourcing this which pisses me off considering how Bill
Gates was against the whole open source concept(wrote many letters supporting
his argument).

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craigvn
Bill Gates has not been running the company for many years. Whether it is open
sourced or not has nothing to do with him. I expect it will depend on how much
value they see open sourcing will be to the community will be an overriding
factor.

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sctb
Current discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10237805)

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Galanwe
I'm not an expert of these technologies, but is this some sort of OpenWrt
competitor?

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wmf
No, it's a competitor to Arista, Cumulus, Pica8, OcNOS, FBOSS, etc.

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Galanwe
So what is OpenWrt then? I thought it was a small linux aimed at being
installed on routers/switches

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epistasis
OpenWrt is meant for single router/switch installations in the home or office.

These switch operating systems are for building large fabrics for out of
48-port 10g/40g top-of-rack switches (soon to perhaps be 25g/100g switches?).
They support automated configuration management, large BGP configurations
(often through Quagga), probably some layer 2 magic, and probably some
hardware acceleration for network virtualization on the later Broadcom chips.

