PacketFront Says ‘No’ To Open Flow Outside Of The Data Centre

PacketFront, a network hardware maker, has sad that the Open Flow standard is not the best choice for networks outside of the data centre.

Instead, the firm points towards the NetConf protocol for use in broadband networks.

In recent years, Open Flow has become a popular technology to control switches in data centre environments for orchestrating services. PacketFront reckons that the issues that Open Flow solves in the data centre do not exist in the regional- or national networks that provide high-speed broadband services.

Reliability issues

PacketFront said that centralised flow control does not scale well and creates reliability issues that are difficult and costly to overcome without adding any benefits.

“With SDN, operators expect to create new services and adapt networks to changing demands from customers much faster and at a lower cost than current solutions allow. The problem is not lack of functionality in the network devices, the problem is how to get full control over every device in the service chain, and in this scenario, Open Flow is not the answer”, said Johnny Hedlund, CEO of PacketFront.

“With SDN, operators expect to create new services and adapt networks to changing demands from customers much faster and at a lower cost than current solutions allow. The problem is not lack of functionality in the network devices, the problem is how to get full control over every device in the service chain, and in this scenario, Open Flow is not the answer”, says Johnny Hedlund, CEO of PacketFront.

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