The Software for Open Networking in the Cloud or alternatively abbreviated and stylized as SONiC, is a free and open source network operating system based on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

. It was originally developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

and the

Open Compute Project The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products and best practices among companies, including ARM, Meta, IBM, Wiwynn, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Hewlet ...

. In 2022, Microsoft ceded oversight of the project to the

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit technology consortium founded in 2000 as a merger between Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group to standardize Linux, support its growth, and promote its commercial adoption. Addi ...

, who will continue to work with the Open Compute Project for continued ecosystem and developer growth. SONiC includes the

networking software A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are m ...

components necessary for a fully functional L3 device and was designed to meet the requirements of a

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

data center. It allows cloud operators to share the same software stack across hardware from different switch vendors and works on over 100 different platforms. Aviz Networks is the vendor neutral entity in the ecosystem that provides multi-vendor enterprise support for SONiC via ONES (Open Networking Enterprise Suite).

Overview

SONiC was developed and open sourced by Microsoft in 2016. The software decouples network software from the underlying hardware and is built on the

Switch Abstraction Interface In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...

API. It runs on

network switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destination device. A netw ...

es and ASICs from multiple vendors. Notable supported network features include Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), remote direct memory access (RDMA), QoS, and various other Ethernet/IP technologies. Much of the protocol support is provided through inclusion of the FRRouting suite of routing daemons. The SONiC community includes cloud providers, service providers, and silicon and component suppliers, as well as

networking hardware Networking hardware, also known as network equipment or computer networking devices, are electronic devices which are required for communication and interaction between devices on a computer network. Specifically, they mediate data transmission in ...

OEMs and ODMs. It has more than 850 members. Companies using and/or contributing to SONiC include Alibaba Group, Aviz Networks, Celestica,

Arista Networks Arista Networks (formerly Arastra) is an American computer networking company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking (SDN) for large datacenter ...

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

Juniper Junipers are coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Juniperus'' () of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on the taxonomy, between 50 and 67 species of junipers are widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from the Arcti ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

- Mellanox and

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

. SONiC is used in Microsoft’s

Azure Azure may refer to: Colour * Azure (color), a hue of blue ** Azure (heraldry) ** Shades of azure, shades and variations Arts and media * ''Azure'' (Art Farmer and Fritz Pauer album), 1987 * Azure (Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell album), 2013 ...

networking services. The SONiC network operating system was presented at the

ACM ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

SIGCOMM 2nd Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking 2018 (APNET 2018) in

Beijing, China } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

is licensed under a mix of open source licenses including the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...

and the Apache License, and is available on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, co ...

References

External links

* * {{Linux_Foundation Computing platforms Debian-based distributions Free and open-source software Linux Microsoft free software Microsoft operating systems Network operating systems Software using the Apache license Software using the GPL license 2017 software