The Software for Open Networking in the Cloud or alternatively abbreviated and stylized as SONiC, is a free and open source

network operating system A network operating system (NOS) is a specialized operating system for a network device such as a router, switch or firewall. Historically operating systems with networking capabilities were described as network operating systems, because they al ...

based on Linux. It was originally developed by Microsoft and the

Open Compute Project The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products and best practices among companies, including ARM, Meta, IBM, Wiwynn, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Hewle ...

. In 2022, Microsoft ceded oversight of the project to the

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Addit ...

, who will continue to work with the Open Compute Project for continued ecosystem and developer growth. SONiC includes the

networking software A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are m ...

components necessary for a fully functional L3 device and was designed to meet the requirements of a cloud

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommuni ...

. It allows cloud operators to share the same software stack across hardware from different switch vendors and works on over 100 different platforms. Aviz Networks is the vendor neutral entity in the ecosystem that provides multi-vendor enterprise support for SONiC via ONES (Open Networking Enterprise Suite).

Overview

SONiC was developed and open sourced by Microsoft in 2016. The software decouples network software from the underlying hardware and is built on the Switch Abstraction Interface API. It runs on

network switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destination device. A netw ...

es and

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...

s from multiple vendors. Notable supported network features include

Border Gateway Protocol Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vector routing protocol, and it makes ...

(BGP), remote direct memory access (RDMA), QoS, and various other Ethernet/IP technologies. Much of the protocol support is provided through inclusion of the

FRRouting Free Range Routing or FRRouting or FRR is a network routing software suite running on Unix-like platforms, particularly Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD. It was created as a fork from Quagga. FRRouting is distributed under the terms ...

suite of routing daemons. The SONiC community includes

cloud provider Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multi ...

s, service providers, and silicon and component suppliers, as well as networking hardware OEMs and ODMs. It has more than 850 members. Companies using and/or contributing to SONiC include Alibaba Group, Aviz Networks,

Celestica Celestica Inc. is a Canadian multinational electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. History Leadership Celestica's President and CEO is Rob Mionis. Mionis took over leadership on 1 August 2015 af ...

, Arista Networks,

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), Server (computin ...

, Cisco Systems, Comcast,

Juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' () of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from the Arcti ...

, Nokia,

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

- Mellanox and VMware. SONiC is used in Microsoft’s

Azure Azure may refer to: Colour * Azure (color), a hue of blue ** Azure (heraldry) ** Shades of azure, shades and variations Arts and media * ''Azure'' (Art Farmer and Fritz Pauer album), 1987 * Azure (Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell album), 2013 ...

networking services. The SONiC network operating system was presented at the ACM SIGCOMM 2nd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking 2018 (APNET 2018) in

Beijing, China } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

. The source code is licensed under a mix of open source licenses including the GNU General Public License and the Apache License, and is available on GitHub.

References

External links

* * {{Linux_Foundation Computing platforms Debian-based distributions Free and open-source software Linux Microsoft free software Microsoft operating systems Network operating systems Software using the Apache license Software using the GPL license 2017 software