Corsa Technology Pushes Network Virtualization to the Edge

5 Ways Network Function Virtualization (NFV) Lowers CapEx and OpEx

Looking to make it simpler to deploy multiple software-defined networks (SDNs) across a common fabric of routers and switches, Corsa Technology today unveiled a programmable platform that can support throughput rates of up to 2.4 terabits.

Corsa Technology CEO Bruce Gregory says the Corsa DP2000 series is designed primarily for metro and wide area network (WAN) deployments that make use of network virtualization techniques to maximize investments in modern networking infrastructure. That approach not only offloads processing from existing routers, it automates the management of network virtualization at Layer 2 of the network stack. In contrast, a network overlay used to provide the same capability winds up introducing too much latency into the network to make network virtualization across a WAN worthwhile.

While the concept of network virtualization has been around in the data center for a while, Gregory says the Corsa DP2000 series marks the first time network virtualization is being brought to the edge of the network. The capability to pool those network resources should also serve as a catalyst for many IT organizations to embrace software-defined networking (SDNs) beyond just the data center, says Gregory.

Thanks to rise of video and other forms of traffic that require large amounts of bandwidth, Gregory also notes that the ability to segment data at the edge of the network is now more important than ever. The Corsa DP2000 series provides access to application programming interfaces that enable IT organizations to program both what types of applications can reserve bandwidth or, in the case of a network operator, what customer should be allocated bandwidth based on their service level agreement.

It won’t be too long before the physical network as it was once known becomes a giant software-defined abstraction, assuming, of course, that the network hardware needed to accomplish that goal without adversely affecting application performance is available.