News
Brocade Hires Software-Defined Networking and Data Center Expert, Colin Dixon
May 2014 by Marc Jacob
Brocade announced today the hiring
of networking and open-source veteran Colin Dixon to the position of Principal
Engineer. An active contributor to the OpenDaylight Project, Dixon is considered a
foremost authority on Software-Defined Networking (SDN), specifically as it applies
to scalable and distributed systems.
Dixon has spent the past decade focused on the advancement of networking, protocols
and data center technologies through his academic and industry research initiatives.
His most recent work examined how to build network fabrics using commodity Ethernet
hardware controlled by software running on commodity servers. This includes building
millisecond-scale monitoring and control capabilities, hardware-agnostic multipath
forwarding and practical support for lossless Ethernet.
Previously, Dixon worked on building enterprise networks using what the industry
today refers to as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) long before any such term
existed. His research also spanned to far-reaching areas such as enabling the
“Internet of Things” deployments in the home as part of the End to the Middle
(ETTM) and HomeOS research projects.
Dixon’s work on SDN has been recognized industry-wide, including within the
OpenDaylight Project. Upon the formation of the project, he co-authored the
“Dixon-Erickson OpenDaylight Merged Controller Proposal,” which now serves as
the core controller plan of record for the Project.
Further, his work in standards bodies has been felt industry-wide. He worked with
the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) Forwarding Abstractions Working Group (FAWG) to
lay the groundwork for Table Type Pattern (TTP) standard that enables switches and
controllers to negotiate richer functionality with the OpenFlow protocol. This work
resulted in him being named an Outstanding Technical Contributor in October of
2012.
Previously, Dixon served in various research roles at IBM Research’s Austin Lab,
the University of Washington, Microsoft Research and Intel Research.
Dixon will join the engineering leadership team of the Software Networking business
unit at Brocade and focus on open source initiatives, such as OpenDaylight. Other
notable software networking and open source hires this year at Brocade include Tom
Nadeau and Benson Schliesser.
