SONiC — The Linux of Networking

Network Operating system for Bare Metal Switching

[This is the first post in series focused on SONiC-Network Operating System and its applications in data center networking]

List of posts part of this series:

1. SONiC Architecture (current)
2. EVPN-VxLAN, Asymmetric/Symmetric IRB
3. EVPN Multi-homing
4. MC-LAG, LACP Configurations
5. SONiC configurations & interfaces
6. Static Anycast gateway configurations

SONiC — Software for Open Networking in the Cloud

SONiC is an open-source networking operating system that is based on Linux. SONiC decouples or disaggregates the software and hardware within a Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking environment. It uses a containerized architecture to set up and govern switching for ASICs, monolithic and modular switches, and line cards.

SONiC provides a flat, highly scalable, leaf-spine IP-Clos datacenter fabric enabling Virtual Extensible LAN (VxLAN for data plane) tunneling of Layer 2 traffic over a Layer 3 Border Gateway Protocol Ethernet VPN (BGP-EVPN for Control plane) and is designed to support modern cloud-native applications, such as Cloud, AI/ML and container environments.