WAN vendors jump on the open source bandwagon

The idea of open source based products penetrating the WAN is not an entirely new phenomenon. For example, companies have a lengthy history of using freeware network management tools such as MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher), Qcheck and TCPDUMP. What is new about open source, in addition to the fact that the user gets access to the code, is that vendors are now introducing open source based PBXs and routers.

The idea of open source based products penetrating the WAN is not an entirely new phenomenon. For example, companies have a lengthy history of using freeware network management tools such as MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Grapher), Qcheck and TCPDUMP. What is new about open source, in addition to the fact that the user gets access to the code, is that vendors are now introducing open source based PBXs and routers.

One of the more visible and well-established companies that provide open source solutions for voice is Asterisk. Asterisk is marketing what it refers to as a “complete PBX in software” and claims that it supports VoIP. Asterisk claims that the open source PBX can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.

Asterix was founded by Digium, which sells a business edition of Asterix and supplies the hardware that is part of the open source Asterisk. Digium says the business edition of Asterisk is a regression-tested version of the open source Asterisk intended for business use and comes with a support package.

If you attended the recent Spring VON conference, you could not have missed the Asterisk Pavilion. Not only was it large, it featured 12 of Digium’s partners.

A new entrant to the open source wide-area networking space is start-up Vyatta, which released the first beta version of its WAN router code in February. The Vyatta software router runs on commodity PCs and servers and is based on the XORP (eXtensible Open Router Platform) project. It currently supports a variety of routing protocols (BGP, OSPF and RIP) as well as Ethernet and T-1 interfaces. Vyatta is focused on competing with Cisco in the low and midsize router market.

We invite you to share your thoughts with us on this topic at the Webtorials “News and Issues” discussion pages here. For example, we would like to know if you would deploy a piece of WAN equipment that was based on open source software?