Cisco is in negotiations to create a new type of network switch that would tap into the movement towards "software-defined networking," according to a report citing people with knowledge of the talks.
On Friday, the New York Times reported that three of Cisco's top engineers are exploring a switch designed specifically for data centers that use software-defined networking, which involves moving many traditional networking tasks off of expensive hardware and into software.
Nowadays, many of the bigger web outfits and other companies are looking to move many of their more complex networking tasks off of hardware devices and into software. With a project codenamed Insiemi, the Times says, Cisco is looking to provide hardware that can serve such companies.
An outfit called Arista Networks -- co-founded by inaugural Sun Microsystems employee Andreas von Bechtolsheim -- is already offering such hardware. Cisco declined to comment on the Times' report. And Arista declined as well. Bechtolsheim sold a previous company to Cisco and actually worked at Cisco for a time.
Various other outfits are offering tools for software-defined networking, including Nicera and Big Switch Networks. The idea was developed in response to networking giants such as Cisco and HP, which in many ways control corporate networks because they control the networking hardware. Software-defined networking, built atop protocols such as OpenFlow, seeks to remove that control.
"It was eye-opening," Kyle Forster, an ex-Cisco employee and a co-founder of Big Switch Networks, told us last year, referring to the first time he looked at the research that became OpenFlow. "So many of the intractable problems we faced at Cisco just felt so easy."
Essentially, OpenFlow separates networking into one plane that handles data and another that controls its movement. This is the way cellular networks have worked for years, but it was revolution in the data center networking business. The control plane could be run on standard servers, and then the data center plane could be run by fairly ordinary high-speed networking chips -- rather than lots of fancy new hardware.
Though this is an attack on Cisco's business, the company now says it has embraced the idea. According to the Times, CEO John Chambers said as much during a recent call with reporters.
