The networking industry is banding together once again to create an open-source routing framework envisioned as the linchpin for the software-defined environments of tomorrow. The initiative completes the last missing piece of an effort to standardize the paradigm that started two years ago with the same players.

Cisco Systems Inc. and IBM established the OpenDaylight Project in April of 2013 along with over a dozen of the biggest names in corporate networking to unify the software-defined movement under a common controller. The consortium is among the primary backers of CloudRouter, which extends the mission deeper into the territory of traditional vendors.

The technology incorporates the latest version of OpenDaylight to implement the packet forwarding capabilities of conventional routers in a relatively lightweight software package that takes up less than gigabyte including the controller. That effectively decouples the functionality from the underlying hardware, which opens the door to an entirely new way of handling traffic.

CloudRouter can theoretically deploy on the same kind of commodity servers that organizations have traditionally used to run their applications. Such hardware typically isn’t as good at moving packets around as dedicated network devices with specialized chips designed for that specific purpose, but it can be considerably more cost-effective.

The low cost of white-box machines makes it easier to add capacity and allows for greater redundancy than expensive proprietary routers, which means an organization can afford to easily replace a node in the event of failure. That in turn makes it easier to scale, a perquisite for the kind of web-scale environments that the project is meant to support.

The emphasis that the creators of CloudRouter have placed on enabling elasticity is also evident in its deployment model. The software can run inside a container – the favored choice of the tech giants at the bleeding edge of the software-defined movement – and under the native virtualization paradigm of Linux. It also supports OSv, a emerging operating system developed specifically with the performance requirements of cloud services in mind.

That choice of implementations makes the project viable in both on- and off-premise environments, which will allow adopters to have a common routing layer across all of their infrastructure, a vital feature for hybrid use cases. Complementing the interoperability are built-in monitoring and reporting capabilities that CloudRouter’s backers promise can provide a detailed view of the entire deployment.

That functionality is useful not only for enterprises but carriers as well, which means that there’s more than a good chance of the technology eventually getting ported to OPNFV, a new sister effort of OpenDaylight focusing on the telecommunications sector. Either way, the project is shaping up to have a massive impact on the industry, and especially the traditional vendors backing it.

Cisco currently accounts for over half of enterprise router sales, with much of the rest divided between Juniper Networks Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Inc, two other founding members of OpenDaylight. If it takes off, CloudRouter could take a significant chunk out of that revenue. But this is a sacrifice that the old guard is seemingly willing to make in exchange for a head start on what they perceive – probably correctly – as an inevitable shift towards software-defined operations.

Image via Pixabay