About DANOS

Owned by Scott Leishman
Last updated: Jul 17, 2020
1 min read

The Disaggregated Network Operating System (DANOS) is a Telco-grade Network Operating System (NOS) seeded to The Linux Foundation by AT&T.

DANOS was defined by AT&T’s “dNOS” software framework white paper to be a more open, cost-effective and flexible alternative to traditional networking equipment. DANOS is based on a subset of the Vyatta NOS used internally in AT&T’s network. It is a ready-to-use Debian-based distribution that makes use of the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) libraries to provide highly efficient software packet-processing on x86 hardware in addition to Broadcom’s Open Network Switch Layer (OpenNSL) libraries to support a hardware programming plugin architecture for merchant silicon based forwarding. OpenNSL plugins for the UFiSpace S9500-30xs and Accton/Edgecore AS5916-54XKS 10G/100G devices are provided.

DANOS supports industry-standard routing protocols and forwarding features such as:

  • Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

  • Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

  • Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)

  • Stateful and stateless firewall

  • Network Address Translation (NAT): NAT44 (SNAT and DNAT), NAT46, NAT64, NPTv6, Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT)

  • Application-Level Gateways (ALGs): ftp, rpc, sip, tftp

  • Policy based routing (PBR)

  • Quality of Service (QoS): Shaping, marking, policing

  • Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) v2/v3

DANOS has an advanced configuration and operational infrastructure that is based on YANG models, an easy to learn command-line interface (CLI), a formalized scripting API, NETCONF support and REST API. This infrastructure allows new features to be easily integrated into the system.

The system includes Authentication Authorization and Accounting (AAA) support using either on device Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) rules or TACACS+.