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A coast-to-coast network trial by AT&T last month using open-source "white box" switches, points toward a future of more reliable services that may come quicker than some people think.
The carrier ran a trial on its core network earlier this year using switches based on chips from Intel, Broadcom and startup Barefoot Networks. The latter only started shipping in sample quantities in December, making the trial deployment a remarkably quick turnaround.
Like other carriers and cloud providers, AT&T is aggressively shifting its network toward SDN (software-defined networking). As these changes are carried out across more infrastructure, they should give service providers and subscribers more flexibility and higher performance.
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