DriveNets is getting a spotlight on the main stage of next week's OCP Experience Center event. The Open Compute Project (OCP) has picked DriveNets, UfiSpace and Credo to give the first live demonstration "ever" of a distributed disaggregated chassis (DDC) model, which was first submitted to OCP by AT&T.
RELATED: AT&T drops DDC white box specifications into Open Compute Project
AT&T put its specifications for the DDC white box architecture into the Open Compute Project in September. On the same day, DriveNets announced that its Network Cloud software was the first on the market to support the DCC model. While AT&T has yet to say which vendors it's working with on the DDC model, DriveNets seems to be a likely candidate. DriveNets said last year it 400G virtual router was being tested and certified by an unnamed Tier 1 telco.
DriveNets said in Thursday's press release that its upcoming OCP demo would be the "largest live demonstration of a distributed router cluster ever given in public."
“This demonstration is a key milestone in our efforts to open and disaggregate the traditional network architecture. The demonstration by UfiSpace, Credo and DriveNets is a great proof point for our vision of building any size router in a flexible, low-cost way – from a single white box to a cluster of white boxes supporting a single router entity of 100 Tbps," said OCP's Rajeev Sharma, software and technologies director, in a statement.
The demonstration will include a software-based router with a cluster size of 96 Tbps along with a mix of 100G and 400G interfaces. DriveNets is one of the vendors that are moving the telecommunications industry towards cloud-native networking software architectures combined with improved merchant silicon.
The disaggregated design is aligned with the vision of TIP (Telecom Infra Project), according to DriveNets. TIP has invited DriveNets and UfiSpace to be advisors on its Disaggregated Open Router Initiative in order to make sure TIP is in lockstep with the OCP's disaggregation efforts.
Network Cloud uses cloud-native routing software to support new functions in the underlying white-box hardware. DriveNets, which emerged from stealth mode in February with $110 million in Series A funding, said the vision behind Network Cloud was to simplify and scale service providers' rollout of 400G, 5G and other new services.
DriveNets has deployed Broadcom's merchant silicon Jericho2 chipset on its routing software that supports packet-forwarding white boxes, and also supports Broadcom's Ramon chip.
AT&T's DDC design, which was also built on Broadcom's Jericho2 family of merchant chips, aims to define a standard set of configurable building blocks on less costly service-class routers ranging from a single-line card systems, known as "pizza boxes," to large, disaggregated chassis clusters. UfiSpace demonstrated its open routing solution with AT&T during last year's Open Networking Summit (ONS.)
AT&T has said it plans to apply the Jericho2 DDC design to the network edge and core routers that make up its global IP common backbone, which is the core network that carries all of AT&T's IP traffic.
DriveNets, which was named to FierceTelecom's 2019 disrupter list, looks to pose a large threat to traditional vendors such as Cisco, Juniper Networks, Nokia and Huawei.