The Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) project, an open source network operating system (NOS) under the Linux Foundation, is accelerating its growth today with new members and enterprise edge efforts.

SONiC was created by Microsoft back in 2016, with the effort operated as an open source project at the Open Compute Project (OCP) from 2017 until 2022, when it migrated to the Linux Foundation. Under the Linux Foundation, the project is growing faster than ever, with the project announcing today that it has added 10 new members, including Asterfusion Data Technologies, Edgecore Network Corporation, and QualitySoft Corporation, among others.

According to the Linux Foundation, the SONiC project now has 4,250 contributors across over 520 organizations, with 20% year-over-year contributor growth.

“The reason we believe SONiC has reached project market fit is because of the global community participation, vendor support, and maturity of the software,” Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, at the Linux Foundation, told SDxCentral. “AI workloads are now driving massive traffic within the data centers, and the leading Open NOS for this is SONiC.”

The full list of new members includes: Asterfusion Data Technologies, Augtera Networks, Celestica, Denvr Dataworks, Edgecore Network Corporation, Micas Networks, Netweb Technologies, PalCNetworks, and QualitySoft Corporation.

PoE Edge Networks with SONiC workgroup gets off the ground

To date, SONiC has found a home inside large telecom networks as well as in the cloud.

One area where it hasn't had as much traction is in edge networks, but that could soon change.

SONiC announced today that it has formed the PoE Edge Networks with SONiC (PENS) workgroup in collaboration with member organizations Aviz Networks, Wistron, Cisco, and Celestica. This initiative aims to adapt SONiC for enterprise edge networking environments by integrating specialized protocols like power over Ethernet (PoE), Spanning Tree, and 802.1x.

Yanzhao Zhang, principal PM manager at Microsoft, who is also on the SONiC Technical Steering Committee (TSC), said that the PENS workgroup is set to enhance SONiC for edge and retail applications.

“The concerted efforts of this workgroup are expected to significantly benefit customers seeking an open-source Network Operating System (NOS) for edge and retail environments,”  Zhang told SDxCentral. “The deployment of SONiC in these domains is anticipated to be highly advantageous, owing to its substantial ecosystem and the strong backing of a vibrant community.”

Up next? Community release 202405

Coming soon, Zhang said that the SONiC community has been diligently working on the candidate features for the upcoming 202405 release. Every year, the SONiC community plans two major releases: one in May and another in November.

The community’s roadmap for the upcoming release includes the introduction of the following features and enhancements:

• SAI health monitoring: Implementation of health monitoring and critical event notifications to enhance the ability to debug ASIC failures.
• LDAP integration: Adoption of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) to provide industry-standard user authentication support.
• PFC enhancements: Refinements in Priority Flow Control (PFC) to minimize false positive PFC Watchdog alerts.
• Security and reliability upgrades: Improvement of security and reliability by upgrading FRR to version 8.5.4, updating the base OS and Docker images to Debian 12 (BookWorm), and enhancing the Platform Monitoring (PMON) framework to monitor voltage and current sensors.
• Unified management framework enhancements: Strengthening of the Unified Management Framework by supporting gNMI subscriptions and wildcard paths for YANG-defined paths.
• Custom signal integrity settings: Introduction of custom signal integrity settings in the CMIS module for optimized performance.

Looking forward, the project is also engaged in exploring several new domains, including using SONiC to meet the unique demands of artificial intelligence workloads. The project is also looking at integrating optical technologies into SONiC for increased versatility.

“In the upcoming releases, we are committed to integrating the innovations stemming from dedicated workgroups directly into SONiC,” Zhang said. “By doing so, we aim to benefit a broader spectrum of users, organizations, and industries. Together, we’re shaping the future of open-source networking.”