The Challenge
Netcom Plus sells network service to residential and business subscribers in Venezuela, and its aging MikroTik installation had stopped keeping up. The configuration could no longer accommodate current service demands or growth, and the underlying hardware and processors had aged out. Traffic crossed a backbone that peaked somewhere between 10 and 20 Gbps. The operator wanted a modern platform that could carry advanced Service Provider features without forcing a costly lock-in.
Evaluated upgrade paths from Cisco, SONiC, and Cumulus fell short on the capability set Netcom Plus required:
- VPLS tunnels
- Layer 2 features
- BGP and OSPF routing
The Solution
Netcom Plus selected IP Infusion OcNOS SP and deployed it on white-box hardware from Edgecore and UfiSpace. The migration ran plug-and-play directly through IP Infusion, retiring the legacy MikroTik backbone and standing up an open networking stack purpose-built for edge and aggregation routing.
成果
- Headroom: the new core reaches 2.4 Tbps of upper capacity, so adding subscribers stops triggering another backbone project
- Feature parity: VPLS, Layer 2, BGP and OSPF all run on the production platform, closing the gaps that ruled out the Cisco, SONiC, and Cumulus options
- Cost: OcNOS came in below those alternatives, and keeping software independent of the box puts Total Cost of Ownership under the operator's control rather than a vendor's
- Cutover risk: IP Infusion ran the upgrade plug-and-play, so replacing the backbone did not turn into a re-engineering exercise
"It was clear the IP Infusion solution beat out the competition on features alone. When you factor in cost, the choice was obvious," said Hugo Araujo, CTO for Netcom Plus. "MikroTik is old hardware and software, old processors. OcNOS feels like driving a new car, and the upgrade was plug-and-play directly through IP Infusion."
Why OcNOS
OcNOS gave Netcom Plus the carrier-grade routing stack it needed on cost-effective open hardware. The operator picks its own hardware, streamlines operations, holds down Total Cost of Ownership, and still has room to grow into the backbone capacity it now owns.