Metaswitch Contributes Virtualised Network Code To Open Source

UK-based Metaswitch Networks has given away some of its network virtualization code to the open source community, designating it as Project Calico.

The technology integrates with OpenStack and provides the framework for orchestrated IP routing between virtual machines (VMs) and host machines, along with internal and inter-data centre interconnects. It describes Layer 3 virtualisation techniques, and is aimed at large cloud data centres.

Metaswitch hopes sharing the framework will encourage more industry innovation and help today’s network operators evolve into “software telcos”.

“Project Calico takes out the excess complexity and provides a solution that is more scalable, more efficient and far easier to configure and troubleshoot. We’re really excited about the possibilities of Project Calico,” commented Truman Boyes, a network scientist at Bloomberg LP.

The project shouldn’t be confused with Calico, Google’s subsidiary that is trying to help rich people live forever.

Encouraging innovation

Network virtualization puts an abstraction layer between hardware and applications, helping replace proprietary and expensive switches with commodity servers that can fulfil the same functions.

Metaswitch says that the Layer 2 network virtualisation techniques currently used by smaller data centres have inherent scaling limits, while more easily scalable alternatives are overly complex and demand a lot of resources. That’s why it decided to offer a completely free alternative.

“The largest Internet-based companies in the world are building hyper-scale data centres that are virtualizing at Layer 3, and that approach makes a lot of sense,” said Martin Taylor, CTO at Metaswitch.

“With Project Calico, we’ve made it possible to build cloud connectivity so that it looks a lot like Internet connectivity.

“Project Calico integrates seamlessly with the cloud orchestration system, such as OpenStack, to enable secure IP communication between virtual machines and, in doing so, it provides an approach to virtual networking that is scalable, efficient and simple.”

Project Calico is currently limited to OpenStack deployments, but in time, compatibility will be extended to support all popular virtualization environments, including Docker application containers.

Under the terms of the Apache licence, anyone is entitled to create their own distribution of Project Calico, as long as they use a different name. Metaswitch plans to introduce commercially supported editions of the project later in 2014.

This latest contribution is part of Metaswitch’s Neuron Initiative, which outlines the path towards NFV for network operators. Last year, the company already open-sourced its cloud-based IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as Project Clearwater.

“We were already impressed by Metaswitch’s Project Clearwater. Our collaboration enabled instant IMS deployment, integration and scaling,” said Maarten Ectors, strategy director at Ubuntu. “Calico is even more ambitious. Ubuntu is happy to extend our strategic partnership and collaborate on instantly deploying, integrating and scaling Calico in OpenStack with Juju.”

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