eBay scores cost savings and a bandwidth boost with white-box switches running SONiC
For online auction powerhouse eBay, customer service is everything. Or, as Parantap Lahiri, vice president of network and data center engineering, puts it, “We want to make the network more like air or water, so our people don’t have to worry about network resources when creating magical services for our users.”
The demands on the eBay infrastructure are staggering: 1.8 billion active listings; 133 million active buyers. It’s main landing page gets 250 million visits per day. Unlike a static storefront site like Amazon, an eBay auction can entail multiple bidders from all over the world competing against each other as the clock ticks down to the end of the auction. And the eBay platform supports direct communication between sellers and buyers, with offers and counteroffers flying back and forth.