In the past JANOG meeting, topics about merchant silicon was discussed at JANOG34(2014 in Takamatsu) and JANOG35.5(2015, in Tokyo) with a title "Whitebox".
On the otherhand, network vendors use merchant silicons on their own switches and routers then sell them. If we look back on the background of the topic at that time, we can understand "why merchant silicon?".
Andy Bechtolsheim, the creator of workstations, gigabit ethernet and micro processors published "10 predictions about networking and Moore's Law" in 2012. Using this article from as a base, I like to discuss about how the network operators change and how they should design their network.
