OpenDaylight Debuts Hydrogen SDN Software

First version of open source SDN/NFV software debuts amid debate about OpenDaylight's aims, Cisco's participation in the project

The OpenDaylight Project, the software-defined networking industry consortium that features IBM and Cisco among its roster of members, has released the first version of its SDN and NFV (network functions virtualization) software, Hydrogen.

OpenDaylight aims to be a virtual networking system that uses existing standards, mainly OpenFlow, so that switches of all kinds -- whether virtual or physical -- can be software-controlled via an open source platform. But the consortium raised a few eyebrows when it first appeared, in big part because of the people involved and questions about what it represents for the networking industry in general.

Hydrogen, which is Eclipse-licensed, comes in three editions: Base Edition, Virtualization Edition, and Service Provider Edition, each aimed at different markets. Base includes the core controller software, plug-ins and protocol libraries for OpenFlow, and configuration databases and tools for Open vSwitch servers and YANG projects. [...]