Metaswitch Unveils Composable Network Protocol Suite for White Box Switches

Builds on trusted protocol expertise to accelerate adoption of disaggregated networking through lower costs, increased choice and greater reliability

Cloud native communications software leader Metaswitch has unveiled a complete portfolio of Composable Network Protocols (CNP) that enables networking teams to create the next generation of white box routing platforms with fully-decoupled control plane components and open management interfaces.

Based on the industry’s most proven and stable IP routing and MPLS networking stacks and an unmatched track record in layer 2 and 3 protocols, this unique suite of commercially supported, carrier-class applications is clearly distinguished from open source alternatives, enabling true software disaggregation while lowering capex, opex and operational risks.

“While the trend towards the separation of networking functions is mostly tied to open-source efforts, these solutions require significant time for integration or testing, potentially missing delivery expectations,” said Chris DePuy, founder and technology analyst at 650 Group. “For 35 years, Metaswitch has delivered hardened protocol stacks to well-known vendors who have tightly integrated these valuable capabilities to their network operating systems. By opening up network protocol stacks to a wide range of customers, the company can enable the white box switch market to deploy cutting-edge routing and switching systems quickly and simply.”

Composable networking is the development of network solutions from completely disaggregated software components, for deployments ranging from simple Layer 2 intra-data center applications to fully featured Layer 3 fabrics, VPN interconnect and carrier-grade MPLS infrastructures. Running stand-alone or combined with any third-party commercial or open source stack, Metaswitch routing and control plane protocols install and operate as binary applications on top of any open network operating system.

The adoption of microservices methodologies across both development and deployment life cycles enables routing, control, management, database and abstraction-layer modules to be written, patched and upgraded independently of the full software stack. This level of modularity simplifies the coding process and reduces software costs by allowing operators to pay only for the components they need. It also lowers operational expenditures by enabling infrastructure automation. This guarantees that every data plane element, including protocol stack, hardware system and management option, is perfectly-aligned with its application.

“Our new white box and open network operating system solution introduces groundbreaking capabilities and flexible purchasing options, while reducing the risk of moving to a fully-disaggregated architecture,” said Martin Lund, CEO of Metaswitch. “Metaswitch has a very strong track record in the development and deployment of hardened protocol stacks for the most demanding applications and OEMs and we look forward to working with an expanded range of customers to help them realize the future of composable networking.”