Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) says it is using Pluribus Networks open networking and software defined networking (SDN) with Dell EMC Open Networking hardware, as part of a multi-site network modernisation project.
AMS-IX currently operates seven independent internet exchanges globally, with the largest in Amsterdam consisting of 14 points of presence, 870+ autonomous systems (ASNs) and 1150+ ports and generating as much as 6.3 Tb/s of traffic during peak times. AMS-IX decided that moving to open networking solutions combined with SDN would best meet their requirements for performance, automation, flexibility and cost-efficiency for their platform in Amsterdam.
“The cost savings of open networking is certainly compelling, but for our team, it is the fabric-wide visibility together with the SDN automation that make the Pluribus Networks solution so valuable to us day in and day out. With this deployment we continue to stay at the cutting edge of networking, further improving network operations and management,” said Bart Myszkowski, AMS-IX network engineer.
The SDN-controlled network fabric federates together a large number of geographically distributed switches to appear as one logical switch, so simplifying network operations, it says.
“Innovation and high-performance services are the foundation of Amsterdam Internet Exchange; it’s what they built their reputation on, and why they’ve led the interconnect market for 25 years,” said Kumar Srikantan, Chief Executive Officer of Pluribus Networks. “This focus on innovation and new approaches led the team to understand the compelling advantages that can be realized once the software is disaggregated from the hardware. Their shift to open networking, with Pluribus software driving automation across the entire fabric, is now delivering the agility and flexibility they need to meet customer requirements well into the future.”
“We are proud to have a network interconnect leader like AMS-IX deploy our industry-leading bare metal switches with the Pluribus Networks operating system,” said Drew Schulke, Vice President Networking, Dell EMC. “We believe this is another proof point of the growing presence of open networking and SDN in the market.”
Pluribus’ controllerless architecture uses the processing inside the switches that are already deployed, distributing intelligence to every switch in the network. This distributed approach to automation lowers costs by eliminating the expense of multiple controllers while improving performance, it says.
AMS-IX also uses Pluribus Insight Analytics, with embedded Netvisor monitoring telemetry and packet flow data sources to enable visibility across the network. With end-to-end visibility into all connections that traverse the entire data center fabric, AMS-IX can analyze and compare actual versus desired performance and implement corrective actions, such as changes to policy or rerouting traffic to implement on-demand changes to the infrastructure.
