Open source networking opens its doors to businesses

It's difficult to know exactly how excited to get about open source networking projects. It's exciting 'cos its free (at least the software is, even if the support isn't). It's not so exciting because not many businesses have yet deployed it.

So should businesses be looking at open source networking? Probably, depending on their needs. I don't suppose there will be too many takers in the FTSE100, nor in the finance sector, due to reliability and security questions needing pretty firm answers.

But for smaller offices, there will surely be some takers. It's free and some of these solutions carry out most of the network features you need in a small business or branch office.

And in some ways, such devices are actually more secure than their proprietary counterparts. Just count on one hand (and you run out of fingers rather rapidly) how many times Cisco has reported IOS vulnerabilities, for instance. And who wants to hack into a little-used open source router?

Download numbers are small, but such solutions bear enormous potential. It just depends on the right software coming along.