Big Switch releases open source controller for OpenFlow
The company has made available Floodlight, an Apache-licensed open source OpenFlow Controller, as part of its commitment to the open source community around Software-Defined Networking (SDN).
“The first instance of OpenFlow open source code was developed by the Stanford Research Lab – where several members of our company including myself worked – in collaboration with other universities nationwide to demonstrate its feasibility,” said Guido Appenzeller, Co-Founder and CEO of Big Switch Networks.
“Now that SDN is becoming a commercial reality, it was natural for us to give back to the research community and develop a best-in-class open source platform for all. This will encourage a rich ecosystem and stimulate innovation using enterprise-grade tools.”
OpenFlow Controllers are central components of SDN as they capture control information from OpenFlow-enabled switches to centrally manage networks.
The Floodlight release, he said, has several aims: to serve the needs of academics, offer a powerful platform to commercial developers to build SDN network services and help network administrators experience OpenFlow first hand.
Appenzeller said the company is committed to maintaining and enhancing Floodlight, which will be a component of its commercial controller and the foundation for additional features and network applications.
Floodlight, offered under the Apache 2.0 license, is an outgrowth of the Beacon controller created by Big Switch Networks advisor and Stanford PhD candidate David Erickson. It was designed and built in Java to offer an easily extensible, developer friendly platform for SDN. The source code is available on the OpenFlow Hub website.
OpenFlow Hub, created and maintained by Big Switch Networks, is a community of developers leading and/or contributing to open source OpenFlow projects. OpenFlow Hub is open to all developers and welcomes any open source project promoting OpenFlow or SDN regardless of its license or commercial strategy.
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