In a post over on the Lime Microsystems blog, Paul Dillien notes how white box and bare metal switches are being used to reduce costs in wired networks, while offering the opportunity to bring independence from vendor lock-in. Before then going on to suggest that, “lessons from these applications point the way for a similar tsunami ahead in wireless networking”.
Paul explains that “the advent of white box hardware from vendors coincides with the twin software trends towards software defined networks (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV)”, bringing the flexibility and efficiency of the cloud, with further cost savings. Noting also how “an open source policy is a key ingredient in the SDN/NFV combination”.
Of course, Fairwaves base stations are Linux-based and open source, all the way from the UmTRX transceiver hardware and up through the layers of the Osmocom GSM stack. While our solutions also benefit from a distributed cloud core, flexible management and remote upgrade. So it’s perhaps not surprising we received a notable mention!
To find out more read the Lime Microsystems post.