Now that networking’s open, what’s next?
Networking hardware and spontaneous applause don’t often go together, but Facebook’s Omar Baldonado set off a round of cheering this week when he told engineers there’s finally an open-source hardware design that they can use to build switches.
It was a goal the Open Compute Project had been working toward since mid-2013, and though the breakthrough happened late last year, Baldonado’s speech at the organization’s summit in San Jose, Calif. was an occasion for line-rate, no-packets-barred celebration.