Networking hardware represents the bones of the Internet, a necessary support with everything else built around it. Traditionally, this hardware has been big, expensive, and available from only a few massive vendors. That’s changing. The Open Compute Project has worked to make hardware more accessible, and its efforts are paying off. Now, networking hardware is becoming a commodity, cheap and easy to buy or build. This has opened a huge space for innovation from smaller companies.

To gain some insight into the world of networking hardware, Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman, cohosts of theCUBE from the SiliconANGLE Media team, talked to Rob Sherwood, CTO of Big Switch Networks, Inc., at the OCP U.S. Summit 2016 conference.

Hardware as a commodity

The conversation started with Sherwood pointing out how commoditization comes from the bottom up, and the Open Compute Project is a perfect example of that. If a group wants to open up a technology, the first thing they have to do is commoditize the hardware, he said.

Sherwood continued, saying things like Open Compute has made it possible to shift the hardware discussion to build versus buy. For most companies, buying their networking hardware is going to be the right choice, but if a company has specific needs or operates at scale, building their own hardware is now a viable option. This has ended up with a space, he said, where it’s possible to build a networking stack if that’s right for the company.

Innovating for ease of use

All of this commodity hardware, Sherwood said, makes it easier to come up with interesting new architectures. It’s a matter of putting the building blocks out there for people to do what they want. This is a very different networking experience compared to the past.

At Big Switch Networks, Sherwood said, the goal is to provide an “iPhone experience of networking” that’s easy to use so customers don’t have to think about it so much. The larger Open Compute Project is enabling this and making it more acceptable to customers.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of OCP U.S. Summit 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE