Arrcus unveils support for 400Gbit/s switch speeds – an industry first.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

January 23, 2019

2 Min Read
Arrcus Takes White Box Switches to 400G

Startup Arrcus claims to have scored an industry first by bringing its white box switch operating system to multiple 400GbE and high-density 100GbE switches -- effectively introducing the first 400G white box switches, to compete with similarly speedy proprietary products from Arista and Cisco.

The switches are designed for service providers and enterprises building platforms on a hypercloud scale for 5G, video, mobile, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other next-generation workloads.

The software, ArcOS, runs on StrataXGS Trident 3 and StrataDNX Jericho based hardware, as well as Broadcom StrataXGS Tomahawk 3 silicon, with platforms from multiple vendors. (See Data Center Switching Enters the 400G Era.)

"The product we have built is the industry's first Internet-scale independent operating system," Devesh Garg, Arrcus founder and CEO, tells Light Reading. (See Startup Arrcus Wants White-Hot White Boxes.)

Arista Networks Inc. scored a first with 400G switches in October, based on its own hardware and operating system on custom silicon. And Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) unveiled its own 400G switch soon afterward. (See Arista Promises New 400G Switches for These Cloudy Times.)

Figure 1: Arrcus's Devesh Garg Arrcus's Devesh Garg

You're invited to attend Light Reading’s Big 5G Event! Formerly the Big Communications Event and 5G North America, Big 5G is where telecom's brightest minds deliver the critical insight needed to piece together the 5G puzzle. We'll see you May 6-8 in Denver -- communications service providers get in free!

While network operators deploying the switches will, obviously, be dependent on Arrcus for software, they'll be hardware independent, and support network management software from multiple vendors due to ArcOS's support for standards such as OpenConfig, YANG, Chef, Puppet, Ansible and OpenDaylight.

White box switches were first introduced more than five years ago, and hailed as replacements for proprietary networking hardware -- the way the X86 hardware replaced mainframes and minicomputers in the data center. Fast-forward to today and in reality, proprietary switches have remained dominant in networks.

But white box switches haven't gone away, says Lee Doyle, principal analyst with Doyle Research. "White box switches have a lot of relevance if you have the expertise and scale to implement them," Doyle says. White boxes are seen in hyperscale providers, greenfield software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, and in very early deployments in the enterprise, telcos and service providers.

— Mitch Wagner Visit my LinkedIn profileFollow me on TwitterJoin my Facebook GroupRead my blog: Things Mitch Wagner Saw Executive Editor, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like