IP Infusion today announced support for the DANOS-Vyatta network operating system across its line of universal CPE (uCPE) appliances under an agreement with AT&T.

The software is based on the Disaggregated Network Operating System (DANOS) developed by AT&T for its own production network and was contributed to the Linux Foundation last fall.

IP Infusion provides uCPE hardware for use by managed service providers. Under the agreement with AT&T, IP Infusion gains the rights to resell DANOS-Vyatta and provide ongoing support for the product. "Our partnership with AT&T essentially helps us provide the service providers with a very hardened and tested platform on which they can build their services," said Sanjay Kumar, VP of marketing at IP Infusion.

The software itself serves as a host for multiple virtual network functions (VNFs) such as SD-WAN, routing, virtual private networks (VPNs), and firewalls.

However, DANOS offers more than hypervisor functionality, said Srikanth Krishnamohan, director of product marketing at IP Infusion. With DANOS-Vyatta, "we have rich control plane and standards-based protocols, which can handle today's underlay and overlay monitoring," he said.

In addition to allowing service providers to avoid vendor lock-in, Kumar explained that this disaggregated approach enables them to deliver multiple services to customers using a single appliance and without the need for specialized IT support.

IP Infusion plans to launch three products based on DANOS-Vyatta in 2020 beginning with the company's Virtual SD-Edge product in the second quarter.

The virtual form factor is designed to extend VPN connectivity to public and private clouds, as well as WAN, security, and carrier-grade-network address translation.

The first product will be followed by a branch-focused offering in the third quarter designed to interconnect remote offices and aid the migration of workloads to the cloud.

Finally, in late 2020, IP Infusion will launch its Universal SD-Edge appliance, a cloud-managed uCPE that offers security, SD-WAN, WAN optimization, and support for additional functionality through third-party VNFs.