Facebook execs says no more secret ASIC commands
News
By Joab Jackson
October 7, 2013 04:53 AM ET
IDG News Service - Facebook's head of network operations has great expectations for software defined networking (SDN), though he may not be relying on commercial hardware vendors to bring SDN to the social networking giant's own infrastructure.
"SDN is the way things are going to be. It is not a fad. This will be the way the networks will be built going forward," said Najam Ahmad, director of technical operations at Facebook, who oversees Facebook's production and corporate network. Prior to joining Facebook, Ahmad worked as general manager of global networking services at Microsoft.
Ahmad was part of a panel about SDN at the New York Interop New York conference, held this week. He spoke with the IDG News Service afterward.
SDN has generated a lot of discussion at this year's Interop. Many wondered if it is just this year's buzz phrase, or as others believe, the future of networking.
For Ahmad, SDN solves an important problem -- making Facebook's network as flexible as the rest of its IT stack. "We want to deploy, manage, monitor and fix the network using software," Ahmad said.
Today's switches, routers and other network equipment stymies Facebook from making the most efficient use of its network and the Internet, he said. The company needs to reduce its network latency as much as possible, simply in order to remain responsive to its billion users scattered around the globe.
Admittedly, Facebook doesn't manage its network with typical network operation center (NOC)-styled operations, in which network administrators monitor screens for alerts and then fix problems as they arise.