ZebOS 7.7 launches in April – going to support PBB-TE
ZebOS is a Layer 2 and Layer 3 carrier-class routing and switching software suite from IP Infusion, a subsidiary of Japanese mobile software vendor Access
Provider Backbone Bridge Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) is causing a bit of a stir in the land of the network geeks. Basically, it's hyped to be a replacement for MPLS (mostly by nortel though, and they have little to loose in this market). Lightreading published an article about in April last year.
Anyroad, this release of ZebOS (a customised version of the FOSS Zebra router project, which they sponsor) enables 'some proper serious networking s***' (a direct quote from one of said geeks), all running off of standard off the shelf hardware. Although not the first project to promise (and even deliver) this sort of thing, I have to say it does look a lot more like a serious contender, especially in the world of low cost campus/metro area networks, if you can throw a couple of cheap white boxes in a local hub and deliver a good enough level of QoS & security to make carriers smile then I can see the likes of Juniper & Cisco missing out on some serious cash down the road, but that of course has been said before. Only time will tell.
