Network switches are increasingly being based on silicon from companies like broadcom with their Trident and Tomahawk line (what Facebook's six pack use), Intel

Network switches are increasingly being based on silicon from companies like broadcom with their Trident and Tomahawk line (what Facebook's six pack use), Intel's Fulcrum chips, Mellanox, or Cavium's Xpliant chips. An ODM vendor like Quanta makes the equivalent of a "motherboard" for those, and sticks it in a box. Then you can get software from a vendor like Cumulus which has all the SDN goodness. Vendors like Cisco, Juniper, or Arista sold all of those as one big product. Whitebox switching is about breaking those up so you can buy them more like you buy your servers.