The Linux Foundation’s disaggregated enterprise edge and campus switching platform, DENT, is now available.

The first release of network operating system (NOS) is called Arthur, named of course after the protagonist of Douglas Adam’s seminal novel "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy," Arthur Dent.

“Arthur Dent is kind of that everyman character in 'Hitchhiker’s Guide,' and we’ve really taken that to heart,” said Trishan de Lanerolle, technical program manager and architect at The Linux Foundation. “DENT is everyman’s, every operator’s sort of NOS.”

The release is the culmination of a year’s worth of work that brought together silicon vendors, original design manufacturers, system integrators, and original equipment manufacturers to develop the edge-focused NOS.

The initial code release is based on the latest Linux kernel, version 5.6, and takes advantage of SwitchDev and other Linux utilities to simplify integrations and abstract away the hardware from the software layer. This enables developers to treat networking ASICs and other silicon — common in switch appliances — like any other hardware, eliminating a potential pain point.

It should be noted that desegregated switching is nothing new. The telecom, cloud, and enterprise data center markets have steadily adopted open source NOS like Microsoft’s SONiC and AT&T’s DANOs platforms. However, The Linux Foundation argues that many of these projects have failed to meet the needs of distributed enterprise edge and campus environments. Remote campus and retail stores are two of the use cases targeted by the project.

DENT is aimed at solving the next generation of challenges faced by distributed enterprises, like retail businesses, de Lanerolle explained. He described a large retail environment in which thousands of cameras and tens of thousands of labels and sensors are used to keep inventory and process transactions.

He added that in this kind of environment there is an explosion of the number of devices being connected to the network necessitating a different approach to switch management and operation.

“With the Arthur release, we’re witnessing the makings of an open network operating system, control plane, and management plane that will transform how enterprises address their distributed edge challenges,” said Arpit Joshipura, GM of network at The Linux Foundation, in a statement.

To date, DENT has received widespread support from companies like Amazon, Cumulus Networks, Marvell, and Mellanox, to name just a few.

Chipmaker Marvell, not to be confused with Disney’s Marvel Studios, has taken a particular interest in the edge with the launch of its Prestera switch and Alaska physical layer (PHY) chips back in June. The enterprise switch silicon was designed specifically to address edge deployments and was developed with DENT in mind.

Meanwhile, the company has seen several new vendors join the project as general members. These companies include Innovium, Archadyan, and Alpha Networks.

The Linux Foundation and its partners are now looking to expand DENT’s feature set to address more challenges. This includes adding functionality, like power-over-Ethernet in order to power cameras and other devices over the network.

While the first release was focused on bringing the code to market and opening it up to the community, de Lanerolle expects to the see the number of platforms supporting DENT to increase over the next few months with production applications in the near future.