June 19 – mSwitch is a “software switch”, a program that allows communication between virtual machines, the same systems that generate a large part of the Internet. Thanks to this project Pisa took home a prestigious international award. Professor Luigi Rizzo and the researcher Giuseppe Lettieri of the Department of Engineering at the University of Pisa received the Best Paper Award at the ACM SIGCOMM Symposium on Research SDN (SOSR) held in Santa Clara, California. Their work, entitled “mSwitch: A Highly-Scalable, Modular Software Switch,” was developed in collaboration with researchers from NEC and NetApp. “Already in 2012, we had developed a software switch called Vale, operating with a speed and efficiency up to ten times higher than similar systems – explains Rizzo – mSwitch extends Vale, making it faster and more versatile. For over twenty years, we distributed the results of our research as an open source software – adds Rizzo – The quality of our software is appreciated worldwide, so much so that it is part of a number of operating systems (FreeBSD, Linux, Apple OSX), in addition to being used in commercial products. The consequences of this choice are very strong, both for my team and for the University of Pisa. In addition to the financial results, our reputation has given us numerous opportunities for international collaborations, in particular with universities and research centers in the Silicon Valley. Many of our graduates used the experience gained in this research as a springboard to obtain prestigious and remunerated positions in the Valley.”
