• Home
  • Who Am I ?
    • Contact
    • What does Ethereal Mind mean ?
  • Disclosure
    • Disclaimer
    • Comment Policy
    • Privacy Policy
  • Just Three
  • Archive

EtherealMind

Software Defined & Intent Based Networking

You are here: Home / AT&T Makes Big Whitebox Bet

AT&T Makes Big Whitebox Bet

3rd April 2018 By Greg Ferro Filed Under: Blog Leave a Comment

ATT has been talking a big game about open source, whitebox and driving real change in service provider markets. We saw announcements this week that suggest that there is real momentum behind them.

Link: AT&T Deploying White Box Hardware in Cell Towers to Power Mobile 5G Era – http://about.att.com/story/att_deploying_white_box_hardware_in_cell_towers.html

Link: Network AI: AT&T’s Framework for Its Open Source Efforts That Will Drive our Software-Defined Network in 2018 and Beyond – http://about.att.com/innovationblog/att_framework

Some Thoughts

  • Whitebox to be used in a thousands of edge locations is a mixed blessing for the wider market.
    • increases production volumes
    • but limited use cases
  • Legacy vendors will be disappointed to lose this opportunity for easy money. Single vendors solutions make a lot of profit margin on the “fries with that” part of the carrier networks.
  • Drives growth in whitebox market mean vendors are losing control of production capacity and mindshare among other operators.
  • Using the same pattern over & over doesn’t make the software enterprise ready. Its focussed on narrow use cases
  • Are we seeing trickle down from MSDCs ? Say, a 5-year lag before we see them enter the market
  • ATT seems willing to contribute back to open source, and form communities. If this continues, then the project could reach critical mass.

About Greg Ferro

Human Infrastructure for Data Networks. 25 year survivor of Corporate IT in many verticals, tens of employers working on a wide range of networking solutions and products.

Host of the Packet Pushers Podcast on data networking at http://packetpushers.net- now the largest networking podcast on the Internet.

My personal blog at http://gregferro.com

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Network Break Podcast

Network Break is round table podcast on news, views and industry events. Join Ethan, Drew and myself as we talk about what happened this week in networking. In the time it takes to have a coffee.

Packet Pushers Weekly

A podcast on Data Networking where we talk nerdy about technology, recent events, conduct interviews and more. We look at technology, the industry and our daily work lives every week.

Our motto: Too Much Networking Would Never Be Enough!

Find Me on Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Return to top of page

Copyright Greg Ferro 2008-2017 - Thanks for reading my site, it's been good to have you here.

Opinions, Views and Ideas expressed here are my own and do not represent any employer, vendor or sponsor.Full disclosure