Understanding the basics of bare-metal switches

Editor's note

As vendors continue to tout networking architectures that decouple software from hardware, bare-metal switches are moving into the spotlight. These switches are built on merchant silicon that may provide fewer features than proprietary chips but enable a lower-cost and more flexible switching alternative. White box switches are poised to be open enough to allow network vendors and users to choose their network operating system, depending on their organization's needs.

Read more about company bare-metal strategies, as well as the difference between bare-metal switches and white-box switching, and the Open Compute project.