Free Open Source Network Operating Systems

Wed Mar 13 07:51:07 UTC 2019

On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 16:09, Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now, the cost of the whitebox plus a paid network operating system seems to equal the same cost as a discounted Juniper, Cisco, or Arista. I am not seeing the savings on paper.

I'm not going to defend the prices of Cisco/Juniper/et al. as they are
often ridiculous however, there are many services you can get from
these larger vendors that you can't from the smaller ones; it's not
only some hardware, software, a bit of support and the occasional bug
fix. Big vendors like Cisco and Juniper (and others, these are just
examples) have a plethora of additional services smaller white box
vendors don't have. My point here is, you seem to be suggesting the
white box vendors offer the exact same service for less money but, in
my experience this isn't apples for apples.

> If we could just buy the whitebox hardware, and have a free operating system on there, then financially whitebox switches would be half the cost of a similar Cisco switch after discount.

If you think about Capex only then possibly yes it could be cheaper.

> Am I missing something?

Yes. Can you imagine what a support nightmare it would be when there
is a compatibility issue between software and hardware and those two
components are from two different vendors and you're having major
packet loss in your network?

How will you manage NMS integration when the hardware vendor
implements counters for that feature you use but the software vendor
doesn’t, or vice versa?

I’m not saying this can’t be done. Cumulus have many happy customers
using white box switches so it definitely can be done. I’m saying,
it’s not just about the Capex.

Cheers,
James.