Hi Andy A valid question. If a route server was the end goal then a stand alone instance of Bird/Quagga/etc would have done the job just fine. The existing NZIX route servers run Quagga for example. The intention here is to use this as a milestone along the way to understanding what is possible on an IX once you have the entire fabric under OpenFlow control. While the first steps have been to emulate the existing functionality, the real innovation opportunities will come once the fabric is extended to more locations. These are the areas that we are looking towards now, with work underway to bring additional locations online in the near future. What could people be missing as exchange operators by not using these tools? Potentially nothing, potentially everything, depends on the operator and how rich a product they want to deliver from their exchange. I know there are IXP operators who are pushing lots of customer driven features into their exchanges, I also know some which treat their IX as just a dumb layer 2 network which people can establish BGP peering sessions over. One of the issues is however that if you deploy them like that then you can get stuck in a place where it is difficult to deliver any value beyond that. Using traditional deployment models, you are limited to the features that a given vendor has enabled for you. In the most part this will be the set of features demanded by their largest customers, of which New Zealand never features. IXP operators then look at duct-taping features onto the side If you want to do something slightly (or heaven forbid, radically) different, then you end up shopping for a different vendor, or simply out of luck. OpenFlow and SDN allow IXP owners to develop and deploy the set of features that they believe their customers require and drive innovation independent of how many of a vendor's customers may want that feature. I like to think of SDN as the Open Source operating system of the networking world. If you can think it, you can build it. Linux has given us an ability to bring new ideas to life that Windows and OSX would never have allowed. It's not for everyone (or every situation) but in the right place, it's unparalleled. SDN is the same. So back to what I was saying earlier. Maybe you're missing nothing by not using these tools. Maybe you already deliver all the functionality that your customers want. Equally likely though, you may have a whole lot of innovative ideas which you wish you could get implemented. In that case SDN might be a way forward. I know where I'm heading. Regards, Dean On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 12:32 AM, Andy Davidson <andy(a)nosignal.org> wrote:
This is really interesting, thanks for posting your news to the list.
Why did you decide to use an OpenFlow controller rather than Bird, Quagga or OpenBGPd as a route-server ? I am trying to understand your motivations and work out what I could be missing as an exchange operator using these tools.
Andy