Open Compute Project (OCP), the open-source hardware-design community spearheaded by Facebook, announced Wednesday that it will design an open-source commodity top-of-rack network switch that will enable users to use software of their choice to control.

The project's goal is to create a design specification and a reference box for an open data center switch that will not have a preference for an operating system like the networking gear available on the market today does. This adds the networking angle to what Facebook and OCP have already done with servers and storage.

The way Frank Frankovsky, who oversees hardware design and supply chain operations at Facebook, put it, the social-networking firm and OCP have made huge progress in advancing design of all elements of the data center except one: networking.

“We are working together, in the open, to design and build smarter, more scalable, more efficient data center technologies, but we're still connecting them to the outside world using black-box switches that haven't been designed for deployment at scale and don't allow consumers to modify or replace the software that runs them,” Frankovsky wrote in a blog post.

The switch will also be “disaggregated”, which in OCP lingo means swappable individual components. Disaggregation is something OCP is working to bring into the server world, with the goal of some day being able to switch processors, memory, network cards or other components without having to switch entire servers in the data center.

Disaggregation is useful not only for more cost-effective upgrades, but also to match configuration of the hardware to the specific workload running on it.

Approach to this effort is different from previous OCP initiatives, where Facebook started by contributing a design to the open-source community, which was then free to modify it if necessary. OCP's networking effort is starting with a clean slate.

Leading the effort is Najam Ahmad, head of Facebook's network-engineering team. A number of vendors have joined Facebook in the project, including Big Switch Networks, Broadcom, Cumulus Networks, Intel, Netronome, OpenDaylight and VMware.

The Open Networking Foundation, a software-defined-network-focused nonprofit founded by Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom, will also participate.

Facebook launched OCP about two years ago, starting with a contribution of the design of its home-baked servers and power and cooling systems at its Prineville, Oregon, data center. Since then, OCP added a data-center-rack development project and a storage-array one.