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Software networking is clearly the future. It is probably long term, but complex hardware switches which do not use commodity processors and commodity software languages will definitely fall by the wayside, even if they are as big and bad as Cisco. Vyatta was a first attempt at a software router, but this is really the next step at software switches.

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Hmm some times custom hardware is needed for switching just of the top of my head you not going to impliment CAM on a bog standard hardware are you.

I could imagine some custom FPGA based modules that you could reprogram on the fly when you needed to regonfigure your networking hardware I am not sure what that buys you networking quipment doesnt have the scale that say a standard pc does apart from maybe acess level switches.

At this moment this seems to be more of a point and drool interface for those that cant hack IOS or pass the CCIE exam.

There's some interesting (one might say verging on dishonest) terminology here. An incredibly complex and specialized Broadcom switch chip is defined as "commodity" while a very similar Cisco switch chip is defined as "proprietary". What is being commented on is really business models (horizontal vs. vertical integration), not technical aspects.

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