Why Snabb?

[lukego]

Snabb Switch is grass roots open source software for people who operate networks. That includes telecom operators, internet service providers, hosting companies, and everybody else who processes a lot of packets.

I believe this is going to be a big deal. The open source revolution is coming to the network operator and telecom industry and I am very excited about this. I have spent my whole career working separately on open source and networking product development. Now I work on both at the same time. I love that.

So where is this leading? Let me paint a picture.

The dream

There are thousands of network operators in the world of all different shapes and sizes. Everybody from the local ISP up to T-Mobile and AT&T. To operate their networks they are buying all manner of network equipment: routers, firewalls, NATs, GGSNs, eNodeBs, spam filters, caches, DDoS protectors, monitoring systems, and ... the list is really endless.

My dream is that when operators need new network elements they will solicit offers for high-quality open source solutions from companies within the Snabb community. They will effectively Cc: every Request for Proposals to the snabb-devel mailing list and expect responses from multiple companies.

Snabb solutions will become increasingly competitive over time as our community grows with software, experience, and people. The set of networking applications that we can deliver with competitive costs and timelines grows. So does our capacity to provide the right kinds of professional support.

Snabb applications will spread through network operators around the world. They will be exceptionally simple, understandable, and easy to deploy. People will enjoy working with them and they will choose to deploy Snabb solutions whenever they have the chance.

Why?

So why get excited about this?

As a network operator Snabb is good for you because:

• You won't have "vendor lock-in". Everything is open source and driven by operator needs.
• You will have more choice of suppliers for support and customization. You can pick any supplier for a given application, you can change suppliers while keeping the same application, and you can use your favorite supplier to support multiple different applications.
• Your engineers will have transparent access to the software development process. This will help them to keep your suppliers honest and to diagnose problems directly.

As a network engineer Snabb is good for you because:

• Your Snabb skills keep getting more useful as more applications are developed. You will use the same techniques to configure, monitor, and troubleshoot all of them. You can also independently deploy any application for your own private testing.
• You can run your own proof-of-concept projects with support from the community. This can be installing off-the-shelf applications or prototyping your own new ones.
• You don't have to passively wait on vendor support ticket responses to solve problems. You can dig in yourself when you have to.

As a software developer (individual or company) Snabb is good for you because:

• You work on developing creatively simple solutions to important problems.
• Your high quality work is valued. There are no barriers to stop customers from working with the best qualified people.
• You can naturally cooperate with others in the community to deliver larger projects. The big fish and the small fish can cooperate within the same ecosystem.
• If you have a billion dollar idea -- something that does not make sense as open source perhaps due to high initial development costs -- you can work with the same people and software to build it as a startup company.

Sounds great to me!

My part in all of this is bootstrapping. I want this ecosystem to exist so that I can participate in it together with everybody else. That is what I am working towards: to be a small fish in a big Snabb pond.

So far we are doing really well :-)

[lukego]

This is really a follow-on to previous posts Snabb Switch for Entrepreneurs and Snabb, my lab.

[ghost]

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