Netronome and Metaswitch develop SDN OpenFlow gateways

Netronome and Metaswitch host a live demo of new SDN capabilities at the ONS

Santa Clara, CA, April 15, 2013 — Netronome and Metaswitch disclosed the details of a unique architecture for OpenFlow gateways based on Netronome network flow processing technology and Metaswitch’s SDN-enabled control plane software.

The companies are hosting a demonstration at this week's Open Networking Summit (ONS) in Santa Clara, California, showing OpenFlow for controlling network gateways between an MPLS backbone network and two IP networks. Each gateway uses Netronome’s NFP silicon and flexible and scalable SDN OpenFlow forwarding architecture, controlled by Metaswitch's SDN control plane for MPLS-signaled networks.

“We are excited about the partnership with Netronome and opportunity to bring this carrier SDN solution to the Open Networking Summit,” said Andy Randall, senior vice president of networking technologies at Metaswitch Networks. “The NFP provides us with the programmable dataplane that unlocks many differentiating features of our control plane software, which is at the heart of devices deployed in every major global carrier network. Together, we are at the forefront of commercializing OpenFlow-based SDN solutions and look forward to building networks with our complementary technologies.”

Netronome’s NFP‐6xxx, which is powered by 96 packet processing cores and 120 multi‐threaded flow processing cores operating at up to 1.2 GHz, delivers 200 Gbps of packet processing with deep packet inspection, network and security processing, and I/O virtualization for millions of simultaneous flows. The NFP‐6xxx is the industry’s only processor specifically designed for tight coupling with x86 processors.

Reproduced from the original article available through Converge! Network Digest.