Nolan Leake, CTO of Cumulus Networks, Is Speaking at SVLUG Tonight

it should be an interesting talk; cumulus supports a linux distribution that has support for many odm switches; the idea being that you can get your software and your hardware from different parties, and pay closer to x86 hardware margins than to network switch margins.

It's also interesting because it's, well, it's linux, so in most cases, it's easier to script against than a network-appliance specific operating system.

(an odm switch with cumulus support is also affordable compared to even used hardware when you need 10g or better ports.)

Nolan is also a pretty smart guy; He did some development work on KVM; I bought (the assets of) tile networks from him when he wanted to switch to focusing on cumulus full time.