Open Fabric Networking for All! OpenSDN is an open source software defined networking (SDN) solution for building large scale networking fabrics. It differs from other solutions in that it supports a large number of different compute systems including OpenStack, CloudStack, and Kunernetes.
FAQ
Yes, OpenSDN is a direct fork of Tungsten Fabric (TF), which was itself based on Contrail and OpenContrail. It is 100% compatible with those technologies and can be a direct replacement.
At the moment, OpenSDN is an exact copy of Tungsten Fabric, but it will likely diverge over time as Tungsten Fabric is no longer supported by Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) or Juniper Networks.
The LFN shut down the Tungsten Fabric in summer of 2023. The Technical Steering Committee (TSC), composed primarily of Juniper Networks employees, voted to “archive” the project.
It is not clear if LFN or Juniper Networks put in significant effort to transition the leadership for TF to the community, but it is clear that there are a number of community members who cared enough to take over and hence OpenSDN.
However, it was clear that large amounts of the TF community were still actively using Tungsten Fabric in production and wanted to continue to use and develop the codebase.
Yes, we had a number of conversations with the Linux Foundation Networking organization. They did not seem to have an interest in bringing TF back to life and hence OpenSDN was born.
OpenDaylight is an SDN controller that can be used as the basis for developing domain specific SDN controllers. It is not a complete fabric solution that includes a controller and forwarding/routing agent.
Cilium, recently acquired by Cisco Systems, is primarily focused on Kubernetes, and while it has some capability to support other systems, seems to be primarily focused on containers.
OpenSDN is a truly platform agnostic SDN solution, supporting a variety of hypervisors, different virtualization management platforms, various container solutions, and even bare metal. It supports open standards such as VxLAN and MPLS, which means it is more easily integrated into existing networking systems.
We believe that while domain specific solutions such as OpenDaylight and Cilium have their place, there is a need for a proven, scalable, and production grade SDN solution that straddles many different kinds of technologies and that is domain agnostic.
OpenSDN, as Tungsten Fabric, has been deployed at scale for large telcos, public clouds (such as Yandex), and major enterprises. It is now in it’s 12th year as a technology and is mature and battle-tested.