IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2022 - 11

Environment for Networking platform, in conjunction
with FPGAs and MCUs devices, allows creating
next-generation hardware-accelerated SDNs.
Finally, it is worth mentioning a set of OSS
tools for emulating/simulating networks, aimed
at helping researchers and network professionals
work on OSN environments, such as GNS3,a
graphical network simulator enabling the design
of complex network topologies and the execution
of fine-tuned simulations over them; Mininet,
an SDN network emulator based on the creation
of virtual hosts, switches, controllers, and links;
or SDN-WISE, an SDN-IoT software simulator
recently released that is gaining traction within
the OS networking community.
CONCLUSIONS
As discussed throughout this column, the
growing number of OS initiatives has moved
from software to other related areas, such as
hardware and networking. Without these OS pillars,
CE will remain proprietary/closed or, at
least, not truly open. It is difficult to guess when
CE will go fully OS, but we anticipate the former
will appear later this decade.
Thenetworkingareaisprobablythe oneclosest
to embrace a wider adoption of OS, by means
of companies and service providers, as they are
currently in the process of redefining both their
networks (IP-to-SDN transition) and the way the
new generation services will be delivered. Innovation
across theentireopennetworkingstack (from
data to control) as well as orchestration, automation,
etc., is mandatory, and it is still a challenge
for the evolution of next generation 5Gnetworks.
In the hardware area, one of the biggest challenges
involves the (mostly proprietary) nanometric
precision machines needed to manufacture
microprocessors. In this line, OSH could be massively
leveraged in two ways: 1) by promoting the
adoption of OSH among microprocessor manufacturers,
and 2) by pushing the adoption of an OS
approach tomanufacture precisionmachines.
As previously pointed out, the adoption of an
OS approach can bring many benefits and opportunities
to CE manufacturers, vendors, and endusers,
such as reducing production costs and
time to market, or improving CE security, among
others. The OS movement is sparking growing
May/June 2022
interest in many diverse areas and this could
lead to an innovation circle providing new ways
of prototyping, producing, and delivering CE
devices. Thus, companies and researchers must
keep up to date not only with innovations in
these areas, but also in related ones. The most
recent OS initiatives and technologies cited in
this column are a curated starting point.
In our opinion, CE quality, including user
experience, does not depend on being OS or not.
Indeed, we have already seen many OSS and
OSH products. We believe that the adoption of
OS in CE will provide clear benefits, allowing
quicker improvements for many aspects such as
security (especially relevant for connected CE)
or ergonomics, to name a few. This leads to innovation
that a small business could not do alone
or that would take longer in a big company.
We really believe that the benefits that the OS
culture can bring to society are huge and only
bounded by our imagination.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by the
Department of Economy and Infrastructure of
the Government of Extremadura under Grant
GR18112 and Grant IB18030 and in part by the
European Regional Development Funds.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCE.2012.2204910 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119986 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119986 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109%2FMCE.2011.2181882 http://dx.doi.org/10.1109%2FMCE.2011.2181882 http://doi.org/10.5334/joh.4
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