Big Switch Networks, the leading platform-independent Software-Defined Networking (SDN) vendor, announced that the Board of Directors of the Open Networking Foundation has appointed Dan Talayco to its Technical Advisory Group (TAG). Dan's appointment reinforces Big Switch Networks' technical leadership in SDN, and underscores the joint commitment between Big Switch Networks, the ONF, and its member companies to deliver open, standards-based implementations of SDN and OpenFlow.

"The Technical Advisory Group serves as the Group CTO to the Board providing high level guidance on all Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technical issues and defining and recommending the technical scope of ONF to the Board," said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. "The TAG will help us advance the adoption of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol, and its members are among our most active and valuable contributors. We're delighted to welcome our new members to one of our most important technical committees."

"Dan Talayco has been a core contributor to OpenFlow since its early beginnings and was instrumental in the development of the OpenFlow 1.0 standard," said Guido Appenzeller, CEO and co-founder of Big Switch Networks. "With this experience he is uniquely qualified to serve on the ONF's Technical Advisory Group, and it is gratifying to see his tremendous contributions recognized by the Board of the ONF with this key appointment."

Dan Talayco is a Senior Architect at Big Switch Networks, where he leads the architecture efforts to help switching partners design and implement OpenFlow. Previous to joining Big Switch Networks in September 2010, Dan was a Research Engineer working on OpenFlow under ONF Co-founder Nick McKeown and Clean Slate Lab Head Guido Appenzeller at Stanford University. For over two decades, Dan has held a wide variety of positions in both the private sector and educational institutions including Principal Scientist at Broadcom, Director of Software Development, at Aprius Inc., Assistant Professor at Boston College, Franklin and Marshall College and Kalamazoo College. Dan has also served as vice-chair of the ONF's Hybrid Programmable Forwarding Plane Working Group. Dan was recognized as the "Unsung SDN Hero" by SDNCentral for his contributions to advance SDN. He is the author or co-author of a dozen U.S. patents and has contributed articles to industry publications. Dan has a B.A., Mathematics, Computer Science from Kalamazoo College and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from The University of Michigan.

The TAG is focused on Larger Issues including:

• Hardware Independence vs. Vendor Differentiation
• Usage of a Reference Implementation
• Forwarding Model Architecture
• Event Trigger API/Mechanism
• Transaction Semantics across Devices
• Rules for Hybrid Programming Modes
• Rapid Tunnel Configuration and Protocol Usage
• Multiple Simultaneous Controllers of the Same Switch
• Proxy Controller Considerations
• Enhanced Controller Resiliency for some uses
• Interworking with Existing Configuration Protocols
• ONF Scope (Northbound API, controller-controller)