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Jan 23
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NRF Big Show 2025 Recap

By Announcements, Blog, Community News

DENT participated in NRF: Retail’s Big Show 2025, held from January 12–14 in New York City, NY. NRF 2025 offered an unparalleled opportunity for DENT to showcase its innovative solutions and engage with a global audience of retail professionals and potential end users.

DENT hosted a booth in NRF’s Startup Hub, a dedicated space for emerging companies and technologies to highlight transformative and groundbreaking ideas. The Startup Hub served as a dynamic platform for DENT to demonstrate its readiness as a retail edge solution and engage with attendees eager to explore the latest advancements shaping the future of retail. The Startup Hub served as a catalyst for innovation, bringing together emerging technologies and ideas ready to transform the retail industry, with DENT actively contributing to the dialogue on impactful advancements for the future of retail.

The DENT team, which included an expert representative from member organization PLVision, and staff from the Linux Foundation, leveraged the event to showcase DENT’s vendor-ready network operating system (NOS). They emphasized its transformative capabilities for the retail industry while educating attendees on DENT’s mission to deliver a lightweight, low-cost, Linux-based NOS that operates seamlessly across a range of devices, from embedded systems to DC switches. 

DENT also highlighted its advancements in virtualization with the SAI virtual switch in DentOS. This technology enables streamlined development and testing in a virtualized environment, eliminating the need for physical hardware and paving the way for greater flexibility and efficiency in networking.

DENT is actively developing a PoC product to address retail edge networking requirements.  

Key Takeaways

NRF 2025 underscored the shifting landscape of retail technology. One of the dominant themes was the future of retail tech beyond AI, exploring its potential to enhance hyper-personalization and store analytics. AI was discussed as a transformative force in retail, promising to make experiences more personal for customers and employees alike. The event highlighted how AI could drive a completely new kind of retailing—not just through efficiency or automation, but by redefining the relationship between retailers and consumers.

A Global Gathering of Retail Professionals

NRF 2025 continues to serve as the world’s largest retail trade event, drawing a global audience. While 2025’s attendance data is not yet available, the 2024 event saw nearly 40,000 attendees, including 19,000 retail professionals, 5,000 brands, and representatives from over 100 countries, with 70% from the US and 30% international.

Future Events

DENT’s presence at NRF 2025 reinforced its position as a leader in the retail tech space. The team is looking forward to upcoming events, including the 2025 OCP EMEA Summit on April 29–30 in Dublin, Ireland, and the 2025 OCP Global Summit on October 14–16 in San Jose, CA. 

As DENT continues to drive innovation in network operating systems, its participation in key industry events like NRF helps advance its mission and connect with stakeholders eager to embrace transformative technologies. Stay tuned as DENT continues to redefine the future of retail networking.

What’s next?

Stay tuned for future announcements and opportunities to engage with the DENT project. Together, we can shape the future of network operating systems!

Jan 09
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DENT and Algebra University’s Open Source Hackathon Recap

By Announcements, Blog, Community News

On December 14, 2024, DENT, in partnership with Algebra University, successfully hosted the Linux Foundation’s first open source hackathon in Croatia. This milestone event brought together bright minds from student and professional communities, providing a platform to tackle real-world challenges in network configuration and management. DENT’s members made the hackathon possible with invaluable support from Sartura and PLVision.

Held at the Algebra Spark Event Space in Zagreb, the hackathon ran all day Saturday, creating a vibrant environment of collaboration, innovation and hands-on learning. With a prize fund of €3,000, the event drew participation from students and professionals eager to push the boundaries of network technology.

Participants formed teams of up to three members, tackling complex challenges in areas like:

  • Cloud system management
  • Remote packet capture
  • Telemetry improvement

Mentors and jurors from the following organizations played a crucial role in guiding and evaluating the participants. These included:

  • Leonid Khedyk (PLVision)
  • Bruno Banelli (Sartura & Algebra University)
  • Vedran Dakić (Algebra University)
  • Andrei Zvonimir Crnković & Svebor Prstačić (DORS/CLUC)

The competition was fierce, with participants showcasing impressive technical skills and innovative solutions. The winners were:

First Place (€2,000 prize):
Pia Maria Bregant (SigmaBit)

Second Place (€1,000 prize):
Erik Štrumberger and Team CodeOne

In addition to the top two teams, several other teams demonstrated exceptional dedication and skill:

  • SigmaByte
  • UnresolvedConflict
  • Studentice
  • Technoserv
  • CodeBros
  • !SMART

We celebrate all the participants for their hard work, creativity and collaborative spirit.

This event marked a significant step forward for open source collaboration in Croatia. By partnering with Algebra University, DENT helped create an opportunity for the local tech community to engage with cutting-edge open source technologies and contribute to the development of next-generation network solutions.

Acknowledgments:

DENT extends its heartfelt gratitude to its members Sartura and PLVision for their crucial support in making this event possible. Special thanks also go to the mentors and jurors for their time, expertise and encouragement.

This hackathon would not have been a success without the enthusiasm and participation of the talented teams who came together to innovate and collaborate.

What’s next?

Stay tuned for future announcements and opportunities to engage with the DENT project. Together, we can shape the future of network operating systems!

Jul 25
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DENT Member Spotlight: Keysight Technologies

By Blog, Community News

This is the third blog in a series of posts highlighting members of the DENT Project. We continue with a spotlight on Keysight Technologies, as explained by Dean Lee, Senior Director of the Cloud Industry Solution Team at Keysight.

Please tell us a little about your organization:

We are the Network Test Solutions group within the Keysight organization. Our team builds Ethernet traffic generators and protocol emulators for the networking industry to validate the LAN, WAN and data centers deployed in enterprises, service providers and hyperscalers around the globe.

Why is your organization adopting a Network Operating System (NOS)?

We believe that the open architecture and collaboration among end users, ASIC, switches and test equipment vendors could truly benefit the networking industry and accelerate innovations.

Why did you join DENT, and what impact do you think DENT has on Network Operating Systems?

DENT, as an open source community, fully leverages the wide adoption of Linux into networking operating systems. Keysight has been a proponent of Open NOS and Open Traffic Generator. DENT aligns with our core competency and beliefs.

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the DENT community?

Keysight has great opportunities to work with industry leaders in network architecture, ASIC and switch designs. We can collaborate and enhance our test capabilities with the DENT community.

What sort of contributions has your team made (or plans to make) to the DENT community?

Keysight provides expertise and test equipment in validating data centers deployed with DENT NOS. We also manage and house the community test lab, which provides the test pipeline for DENT NOS CI/CD.

What sets DENT apart from other industry alliances?

DENT is flexible and also specializes in retail, enterprise and campus networking. It covers the area not serviced by SONiC. Since it is a true Linux-based NOS, the deployment and management can be easily handled just like a Linux server.

How will DENT help your business?

We can leverage the test cases contributed by community members and share them with more Keysight test solution users.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining DENT?

DENT is the NOS for any applications outside core data centers. It is easy to deploy and adopt. Keysight provides a community test lab to assist PoC and vendor validation as a service. The onboarding of new use cases is easy with community support.

Keysight DENT Representatives:

Dean Lee, Senior Director, Cloud Industry Solution Team

Manodipto Ghose, Product Manager 

Jul 18
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Linux Support for PoE Funded by DENT

By Blog, Community News, News

DENT has made significant strides in enhancing the upstream Linux Kernel to function as NoS without additional overheads for retail-edge use cases. A critical feature for these edge scenarios is Power over Ethernet (PoE). In this blog post, we will explore DENT’s contributions by examining past, present, and future PoE support in the upstream Linux Kernel.

Past Developments:

Previously, the Linux kernel offered no support for PoE technologies. Hardware vendors frequently provided non-universal, user-space solutions resulting in fragmented and inconsistent implementations. DENT recognized the need for evolution and began developing a standardized solution integrated within the Linux kernel.

In 2022, a major milestone was reached when a Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) subsystem was added to the Linux kernel. However, this subsystem was only capable of supporting a related technology called Power over Data-Lines (PoDL). Learning and building from this achievement, DENT focused on implementing total PoE support.

Ongoing Developments:

DENT member Bootlin has spearheaded the development of DENT’s upstreaming efforts. Our initial goal was to bring basic PoE support, focusing on basic features like enabling and disabling power and achieving port status. This successful effort resulted in the development and upstreaming of drivers for two different PoE controllers: Microchip PD692x0 and TI TPS23881.

Bootlin’s Köry Maincent (Embedded Linux and Kernel Engineer) played a critical role in this development, spanning nine iterations from November 2023 to April 2024. The culmination of this work will be seen in the Linux 6.10 release, marking a significant achievement for DENT and the broader Linux community.

For more information on Maincent’s remarkable work, watch his presentation from Embedded Open Source Summit 2024.

Following the initial support, DENT immediately began working on the next set of features, including enhanced status information like consumed power, negotiated class and extended state reports, as well as the option to read and configure PoE port power limits. This work, developed through six iterations, has been merged and is set to be included in Linux 6.11.

What’s Next:

Looking ahead, DENT has ambitious plans for PoE. Next steps include:

  • Supporting port priority to manage power allocation when existing, available power is insufficient.
  • Implementing the PD62x0 persistent configuration mechanism for custom configurations across reboots.
  • Modifying the POED project to use the new standard Linux interface for PoE instead of user-space drivers.

DENT is committed to further enhancing PoE support within the Linux kernel. Stay tuned as DENT continues to build a brighter future for open source PoE.

For more information on Bootlin’s PoE work, read its recent PoE blog: https://bootlin.com/blog/power-over-ethernet-poe-support-into-the-official-linux-kernel/

Check out upcoming events where DENT will be present: https://dent.dev/event/

Apr 23
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DENT Member Spotlight: Edgecore Networks

By Blog, Community News

This is the second in a series of posts highlighting members of the DENT Project. We continue with a spotlight on Edgecore Networks, as explained by Edgecore Networks’ Head of Engineering Larry Ho.

Please tell us a little about your organization:
Back in 2020 when Edgecore joined DENT as a founding member, we were convinced that open source NOS, like dentOS, can play a key role in the next-generation technologies of open networking. Obviously, we still are as of today. A key component of Edgecore’s solution is an open source NOS.

Why did you join DENT, and what impact do you think DENT has on Network Operating Systems?
When Edgecore joined DENT, it was the only open source NOS that was architected and designed for enterprise edge and retail. Today, it remains the only NOS that is dedicated to this space.

What do you see as the top benefits of being part of the DENT community?
Since 2021, there has been growing interest by operators in enterprise edge and retail domains to deploy Open Source software. DENT is a proven technology in deploying to retail stores. Its community plays a pivotal role in ramping up DENT and its related technologies. It also serves as the messenger to educate operators who may be interested in DENT.

What sort of contributions has your team made (or plans to make) to the DENT community?
Edgecore started as a switch hardware contributor. While we plan to continue contributions in this area, we also participated in DENT’s test subgroup to help solidify DENT’s community development and testing infrastructures and processes. Edgecore was also instrumental in supporting DENT to adopt SAI in 2022. If and when DENT adopts switch hardware based on Broadcom’s silicon, we will look at opportunities for SAI contributions. 

What sets DENT apart from other industry alliances?
DENT is now a 4+ years open source project. It is still gathering participation and interest. During this journey, DENT has shown its willingness to adjust from its original purely switchdev base architecture to include a SAI base architecture. In Edgecore’s view, SAI will increase the choices of silicon and switching platforms available which is key to DENT’s ultimate goal: broad commercial deployment. 

How will DENT help your business?
A key element of Edgecore’s solution is open source NOS.

What advice would you give to someone considering joining DENT?
Like any open source community, there are several key factors to ensure its success. One is broad deployment in commercial environment: adoption; The other is continuous evolution of its technologies with contributions from broad segments of the community. There are actually more factors. Joining DENT implies you are preparing to help in one or more of these factors.

Edgecore Networks DENT Representatives:

Nanda Ravindran, Vice President of Product Management

William Chiang, Project Software Manager

 

 

Apr 18
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2023 OCP DENT Mini Summit Part 10: DENT BoF

By Blog, Community News

This blog post is the tenth in a series of 10 summarizing the sessions from the OCP DENT Mini Summit. Please see previous posts here:

Part 1: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/19/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-1-leading-the-evolution-of-nos/

Part 2: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/21/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-2-introduction-to-dent/

Part 3: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/26/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-series-part-3-vision-of-dent/

Part 4: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/28/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-4-dent-features-roadmap/

Part 5: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/04/02/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-5-the-whats-done-and-whats-new-in-dent-streaming-activities/

Part 6: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/18/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-6-switch-abstraction-interface-sai-testing-in-dent/

Part 7: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/18/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-7-dent-workshop/

Part 8: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/04/11/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-8-open-source-poe-and-dent/

Part 9: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/04/16/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-9-best-practices-to-integrate-dent-community-test-cases-into-ci-pipeline/

The DENT community hosted a Mini Summit during the OCP Global Summit to gather industry leaders, engineers, developers, and stakeholders interested in DENT within the framework of the OCP.

The final session of the 2023 OCP DENT Mini Summit featured a roundtable discussion from the following figures:  

Jan Klare: Senior Solutions Architect at BISDN 

Larry Ho: Chairman; Head of Engineering at Edge-Core Networks

Sandeep Nagaraja: Principal Engineer at Amazon 

Taras Chornyi: Director of Open Networking Solutions and Strategy at PLVision 

Manodipto Ghose: Product Manager at Keysight

In the dynamic world of networking, DENT stands out as a pivotal force, driving discussions toward collaborative innovation and future readiness. The recent Panel: DENT Birds of a Feather (BoF) session shed light on DENT’s trajectory, emphasizing its role in shaping the digital landscape.

The dialogue revolved around collaboration, particularly between DENT and Sonic. There’s a growing consensus on the potential merger of these platforms, with DENT possibly running as a container within Sonic. This integration promises seamless interoperability and efficiency, propelling DENT toward broader adoption.

A key focus for DENT is its evolution toward the Enterprise Edge. Panelists stressed the importance of imbuing DENT with enterprise-grade features, expanding its utility beyond traditional networking realms. From PoE to straight-through processing (STP), DENT aims to integrate seamlessly with Enterprise infrastructure, fostering innovation and operational excellence.

Looking ahead to 2024, DENT embarks on a journey toward innovating compute products and exploring technologies. This diversification signifies DENT’s commitment to staying at the forefront of networking and computing convergence.

Despite challenges in infrastructure for medium-sized campus deployments, DENT remains resilient. Through strategic collaborations and technological advancements, DENT aims to overcome these hurdles, reinforcing its position as a leader in the networking landscape.

Central to DENT’s evolution is community-driven innovation. Stakeholders are encouraged to actively participate in DENT’s journey, shaping its trajectory and contributing to its success.

In conclusion, DENT emerges as a guiding force in the ever-evolving world of networking. By embracing collaboration, diversification, and community-driven innovation, DENT charts a course toward a future where networking knows no boundaries, empowering organizations to navigate the digital age with confidence.

Follow us for more updates!

Apr 16
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2023 OCP DENT Mini Summit Part 9: Best Practices to Integrate DENT Community Test Cases Into CI Pipeline

By Blog, Community News

This blog post is the ninth in a series of 10 summarizing the sessions from the OCP DENT Mini Summit. Please see previous posts here:

Part 1: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/19/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-1-leading-the-evolution-of-nos/

Part 2: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/21/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-2-introduction-to-dent/

Part 3: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/26/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-series-part-3-vision-of-dent/

Part 4: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/28/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-4-dent-features-roadmap/(opens in a new tab)

Part 5: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/04/02/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-5-the-whats-done-and-whats-new-in-dent-streaming-activities/

Part 6: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/18/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-6-switch-abstraction-interface-sai-testing-in-dent/

Part 7: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/03/18/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-7-dent-workshop/

Part 8: https://dent.dev/blog/2024/04/11/2023-ocp-dent-mini-summit-part-8-open-source-poe-and-dent/

The DENT community hosted a Mini Summit during the OCP Global Summit to gather industry leaders, engineers, developers, and stakeholders interested in DENT within the framework of the OCP.

Keysight Director Mircea Dan Gheorghe, Keysight Product Manager Manodipto Ghose, and Amazon Senior Software Engineer Chetan Murthy educated attendees on how to deploy the DENT community test bed in a virtualized setting. By leveraging virtualized test ports and DENT NOS, users can easily recreate real-world networking scenarios in a streamlined manner.

The deployment process is designed to be user-friendly, catering to both newcomers and experienced contributors. With a focus on accessibility and ease of setup, the virtualized test environment democratizes testing and accelerates innovation within the DENT community.

Comprehensive test coverage and seamless integration with CI pipelines enhance efficiency and facilitate rapid iteration and deployment of DENT solutions. By embracing standardized testing practices, the DENT ecosystem promotes interoperability and reliability, driving greater adoption of DENT technology.

In summary, the deployment of the DENT community test bed in a fully virtualized environment marks a significant milestone in the evolution of DENT technology. As the DENT community continues to innovate and collaborate, the future looks promising for dynamic edge networking.

Follow us for more updates!

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