By Darren Giacomini
The concept of white box is nothing new to the IT industry. In the beginning, there were a handful of manufactures who dominated the server, workstation, and laptop market. Well-known brands like IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Compaq were a mainstay throughout corporate IT. As the industry started to shift, generic —or white box— servers began to emerge. Companies like Supermicro and ABMX offer price competitive solutions over traditional branded products. Large companies like Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn have all made the shift to white box servers.
In early 2014, news began to emerge that Facebook was developing its own network switching platform based on industry standard switching hardware. Throughout the years companies link Cisco, HP, and Juniper Networks all developed their own network switching application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).
Network switch ASICs are specialized hardware that are responsible for forwarding network packets and making network routing decisions at very high speeds. Over the last couple of years, networking companies have started to move away from developing their own ASICs, internally, and shifted toward a merchant silicon model of business.
Chip manufacturers like Broadcom and Marvell have created “off the shelf” availability of the ASIC components required to build network switches. With the evolution of merchant silicon, network switching hardware had become a commodity. It was only a matter of time before the concept of white box switching began to emerge.
Today, networking vendors procure their network switch hardware from a handful of vendors. Companies like Accton, Delta Networks, and Quanta produce the majority of network hardware on the market. In addition to manufacturing the hardware, Accton, Delta Networks, and Quanta have released their own brand networking switch products, leveraging the same hardware as the large vendors.
Edge-Core, Agema, and IW Networks switches support a full feature set that is comparable to Cisco, HP, and Juniper but at a significant reduction in cost.
Therefore, bidding a surveillance job can be very competitive. More often than not, the network is one of the areas that is targeted to reduce the overall job cost.
Ironically, electing to go with lower cost network equipment will often “increase” the overall costs associated with the job, not reduce it. Integrators find themselves trying to troubleshoot network related issues that mask themselves as video management system (VMS) or IP-camera issues.
The underlying network is the most important piece of a successful surveillance deployment and white box switches are an excellent way to reduce the overall cost of your surveillance project while maintaining a quality network that will serve as a solid foundation.
For integrators that are looking for additional cost savings, “bare metal switches” can be an excellent option. By dis-aggregating the software from the hardware, software only solutions like Cumulus, Pica8, and Big Switch can be loaded onto bare metal network switches purchased from Accton, Delta Networks, and Quanta.
White box solutions and bare metal switching has certainly caught the attention of the large network vendors. Dell, Extreme Networks, and HP are all offering branded bare metal platforms that are operating system agnostic. Extreme Networks has taken the concept of disaggregation a step further with the introduction of private label switching.
Private label switching disaggregates the switch hardware from the software allowing vendors to purchase the hardware directly from Delta Networks and bundle the hardware with Extreme software.
Another example is the Titan series switches from BCDVideo. Titan switches are a byproduct of private label switching. As an integrator, you get all the benefits of the Extreme Networks Virtual Services Platform, at a significant cost reduction.
While white box switching might not be for everyone, the benefits to the surveillance industry are undeniable.
White box, branded white box, and bare metal switching solutions offer uncompromised enterprise class solutions, at a fraction of the cost. Building a solid network infrastructure will result in better overall system stability, reduces support costs, and a better customer experience.
About The Author
Darren Giacomini is the Director of Networking at BCDVideo and has over 16 years of networking experience.