Irving, Texas-based NEC Corporation of America is modernizing its presence in the software-defined networking market with a new controller that works with open-source hardware and software.
NEC, which provides and integrates advanced IT, communications, networking and biometric solutions, on March 16 announced the release of the next generation of its ProgrammableFlow Networking Suite, which includes a new SDN ProgrammableFlow Controller and networking coordinator.
The company showcased the new network suite at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., which ends March 17.
The package supports a packet-processing pipeline capability designed to work with low-cost Open Compute Project-approved network equipment, enabling a more efficient network architecture, the company said.
The suite also offers improvements in network security, operational cost savings, and optimizes the ability to manage and control networks, NEC said.
Key benefits of release 6.3, according to NEC, are:
—Non-blocking spine leaf network designed specifically for data center networks provides high performance network built on a low-cost, power-efficient, open standard platform.
—Secure network isolation of data traffic with up to 64,000 virtual networks, supporting fine grained network segmentation and multitenancy.
—Support for massive scalability —up to 10,000 switches— in a federated controller network, an increase of 2,000 switches from the previous release.
—Zero-touch network policy provisioning from the NEC ProgrammableFlow Controller increases service agility and reduces the network administrative burden.
—High availability —an up to 16-way path redundancy network control provides high levels of reliability for mission critical applications.
The ProgrammableFlow Network Suite was the first commercially available SDN solution to leverage the OpenFlow protocol enabling complete network virtualization, allowing customers to deploy, control, monitor, and manage multi-tenant network infrastructure. It also provided the first comprehensive suite that includes both physical and virtual switches as well as an SDN controller and applications, NEC claimed.