Barefoot Networks may have built the world's fastest networking switch chip

Networking has undergone radical changes in the past few years, and two startup launches this week show the revolution isn’t over yet.

Barefoot Networks is making what it calls a fully programmable switch platform. It came out of stealth mode on Tuesday, the same day 128 Technology emerged claiming a new approach to routing. Both say they’re rethinking principles that haven’t changed since the 1990s.

Now is a good time to shake up networking, because IT itself is changing shape, says Nemertes Research analyst John Burke.

“Everybody pretty much wants and needs their IT services to work continuously and scalably,” Burke said. Enterprises need shorter communication delays, a way to scale networks up or down without months of preparation, and a distributed architecture to prevent breakdowns from one hardware failure. It’s happening because many enterprise applications just can’t stop working without dire consequences.

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