$50,000 prize for new open source Open Flow driver

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) has initiated a competition with a $50,000 prize to develop an essential component for the OpenFlow software defined networking (SDN). The ONF is dedicated to promoting SDN, where the routing of traffic in a network is independent of the underlying hardware using the OpenFlow protocol. OpenFlow is at the heart of many plans for software defined networking; for example, the recently announced OpenDaylight project uses the protocol as part of its architecture. The Open Networking Foundation's board members include Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft, and it has an industry-wide membership.

The driver that the ONF is looking for is one that plugs into OpenFlow controllers and manages a connection with OpenFlow switches, isolating the controller from having specific knowledge of the underlying wire protocols. The driver should be modular enough to also be plugged into future OpenFlow applications and be compatible with OpenFlow 1.3.1 and backward compatible with 1.0.

The creation of an open source driver will, the ONF hopes, spur adoption of OpenFlow by equipment vendors and developers by reducing the cost of entry and development of OpenFlow products. The winning driver will have to have its ownership transferred to the ONF who will then license it under Apache 2.0 and the GPL "for maximum compatibility with both other open-source projects and commercial ones". To win, the driver developers must show an example controller which can learn OpenFlow switch functionality and is able to work with C/C++, Python, Java and/or Ruby; it must run on standard Linux or Windows and should be compilable on non-x86 CPUs. The competition will run over the summer and closes on 15 August, with the results being announced on 30 September. Further details are available in the terms and conditions.

(djwm)