Keysight Technologies and AVIZ Networks announced on Monday the results of the first Community PlugFest of the SONiC open source network operating system, which took place from May to June 2021.

PlugFest results demonstrate that Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) technology is ready to be deployed. SONiC, the Linux-based open source network operating system, runs on switches from multiple vendors and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). It enables users to build network solutions while leveraging the strength of a large ecosystem and community.

In addition to Keysight and AVIZ Networks, the open community test event brought together customers from SONiC’s Customer Advisory Board, including community members of Enterprise Network Operators, System Integrators, and Cloud Service Providers; suppliers, including ASIC manufacturers, Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs), Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs).

The PlugFest determined the maturity of SONiC on different hardware platforms from a customer perspective using a test suite from 6 vendors to validate feature sets, scalability and performance. The “essential test suite” validated the key functionalities listed by the SONiC community for management, layer 2 and layer 3 functionalities. The “scale test suite” characterized the ability to scale up. The scale of the control and data plan and the “deployment test suite” validated the NetOps integration in a Tier1 / Tier0 topology. Test content and methodologies have been reviewed and improved by the PlugFest Customer Advisory Board.