nyse anet industry networking hardware cloud networking founded october 2004 headquarters santa clara california usa key people jayshree ullal ceo andy bechtolsheim cdo & chairman kenneth duda cto ita brennan cfo products network switches software revenue us 838 million 2015 1 operating income us 149 million 2015 1 net income us 121 million 2015 1 total assets us 1.1 billion 2015 1 total equity us 788 million 2015 1 website www.arista.com arista networks previously arastra 2 is a computer networking company headquartered in santa clara california usa . the company designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software defined networking sdn solutions for large datacenter cloud computing high performance computing and high frequency trading environments . arista s products include an array of 10 40 100 gigabit ethernet low latency cut through switches including the 7124sx 3 which remained the fastest switch 4 using sfp optics through september 2012 5 with its sub 500ns latency as well as the 7500 series arista s award winning 6 modular 10g 40g 100gbit s switch . arista s own linux based network operating system eos extensible operating system runs on all arista products . contents 1 corporate history 2 products 2.1 extensible operating system 2.2 programmability 2.3 ethernet switches 3 major competitors 4 references 5 external links corporate history edit andy bechtolsheim co founded sun microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer . in 1995 david cheriton co founded granite systems with bechtolsheim a company that developed gigabit ethernet products which was acquired by cisco systems in 1996 . 7 in 2001 cheriton and bechtolsheim founded another start up kealia 8 which was acquired by sun in 2004 . from 1996 to 2003 bechtolsheim and cheriton occupied executive positions at cisco leading the development of the catalyst product line along with kenneth duda who had been granite systems first employee . 9 in 2004 the three then went on to found arastra later renamed arista 2 . bechtolsheim and cheriton were able to fund the company themselves . 10 in may 2008 jayshree ullal left cisco after 15 years at the company and was appointed ceo of arista in october 2008 . 11 in june 2014 arista networks had its initial public offering on the new york stock exchange under the symbol anet . 12 in december 2014 cisco filed two lawsuits against arista alleging extensive intellectual property infringement . 13 as a result of the first lawsuit the united states international trade commission issued limited exclusion and cease and desist orders concerning two of the features patented by cisco 14 and upheld an import ban on infringing products . 15 the decision is being appealed to the united states court of appeals for the federal circuit . products edit extensible operating system edit eos is arista s network operating system and comes as a single image that runs across all arista devices 16 or in a virtual machine . 17 eos runs on an unmodified linux kernel under a fedora based userland . 18 there are more than 100 independent regular processes called agents responsible for different aspects and features of the switch including drivers that manage the switching asics the cli snmp spanning tree protocol and various routing protocols . all the state of the switch and its various protocols is centralized in another process called sysdb . separating processing carried by the agents from the state in sysdb gives eos two important properties . the first is software fault containment which means that if a software fault occurs the damage is limited to a single agent . 19 20 the second is stateful restarts since the state is stored in sysdb when an agent restarts it picks up where it left off . 20 since agents are independent processes they can also be upgraded while the switch is running a feature called issu in service software upgrade . the fact that eos runs on linux allows the usage of common linux tools on the switch itself such as tcpdump or usual configuration management systems . eos provides extensive apis to communicate with and control all aspects of the switch . to showcase eos extensibility arista developed a module dubbed cloudvision 21 that extends the cli to use xmpp as a shared message bus for managing and configuring switches . 22 this was implemented simply by integrating an existing open source xmpp python library with the cli . programmability edit in addition to all the standard programming and scripting capabilities traditionally available in a linux environment eos can be programmed using different mechanisms advanced event management 23 can be used to react to various events and automatically trigger cli commands execute arbitrary scripts or send alerts when state changes occur in the switch such as an interface going down or a virtual machine migrating to another host . event monitor tracks changes made to the mac arp and routing table in a local sqlite database for later querying using standard sql queries . 24 eapi external api 25 offers a versioned json rpc interface to execute cli commands and retrieve their output in structured json objects . ethernet switches edit arista s product line can be separated in eight families 7500e series modular chassis with a voq fabric supporting up to 4 or 8 store and forward line cards delivering line rate non blocking 10gbe 40gbe and 100gbe 26 performance in a 30tbit s fabric supporting a maximum of 1152 10gbe ports with 144gb of packet buffer . each 100gbe ports can also operate as 3x40g or 12x10g ports 27 thus effectively providing 120gb of line rate capacity per port . 7300 series modular chassis with 4 8 or 16 line cards with 2.56 tbit s of capacity per line card for a fabric totaling up to 40tbit s of capacity for up to 2048 10gbe ports . 28 unlike the 7500 series 10gbase t is available on 7300 series line cards . 7200 series 2u low latency high density line rate 40gbe switches with 5.12 tbit s of forwarding capacity . 29 7100 series 1u ultra low latency cut through line rate 10gb switches . the 7124sx has a sub 500ns port to port latency regardless of the frame size . 4 the 7124fx dubbed the application switch 30 includes an altera fpga capable of processing 8 x 10gbit s which made possible cut through high frequency trading in which algorithmically generated trades were incurring an additional latency of only 176ns . 31 7150 series 1u ultra low latency cut through line rate 10gb switches . port to port latency is sub 380ns regardless of the frame size . 32 unlike the 7100 series the switch silicon can be re programmed 33 to add new features that work at wire speed such as vxlan or nat pat . 7050 series 1u low latency cut through line rate 10gb and 40gb switches . this product line offers a higher port density than the 7100 series with a minimum of 52 x 10gbe ports at the expense of slightly increased latency 1.2 s or less . 7048 series 1u store and forward line rate 1gb top of rack switch with 4x10gb uplinks . these switches use a deep buffer architecture with 768mb of packet memory . 7010 series 1u low power 52w line rate 1gb top of rack switch with 4x10gb uplinks . 34 the low latency of arista switches has made the platform prevalent in high frequency trading environments such as the chicago board options exchange 35 largest u.s. options exchange lehman brothers 36 or rbc capital markets . 37 as of october 2009 one third of its customers were big wall street firms . 38 arista s devices are multilayer switches which support a range of layer 3 protocols 39 including igmp vrrp rip bgp ospf is is as well as openflow . the switches are also capable of layer 3 or layer 4 ecmp and applying per port l3 l4 acls entirely in hardware . all of arista s switches are built using merchant silicon instead of custom switching asics . this strategy enables arista to leverage latest advances in processor manufacturing technology at a lower price point due to the prohibitive costs associated with the development and production of custom chips . other major competitors such as cisco and juniper have also started following the same strategy 40 which led to multiple competing products built on top of the same chips . for instance broadcom s trident chip is used in some cisco nexus switches juniper qfx switches force10 ibm and hp switches . 41 the integration of the chips with the rest of the system including integration with the mac phy and device drivers on the control plane and software are what differentiate the competing products . in november 2013 arista networks introduced the spline network combining leaf and spine architectures into a single tier network which aims to cut operational costs . 42 major competitors edit brocade communications systems cisco systems extreme networks juniper networks references edit a b c d e arista networks inc. 2015 annual report form 10 k . united states securities and exchange commission . january 31 2015 . a b arastra starts with a name changer aims for a game changer . hpcwire . 23 october 2008 . retrieved 16 october 2011 . arista advances race to zero with sub 500 nanosecond latency switch press release . arista networks . 15 march 2011 . retrieved 21 june 2014 . a b arista blade win top spot in data center switch test . network world inc. 18 january 2010 . retrieved 16 october 2011 . cisco looks to one up arista juniper with nexus 3548 . informationweek . 19 september 2012 . retrieved 10 april 2013 . interop 2010 show winners . informationweek . 28 april 2010 . retrieved 22 july 2012 . cisco buys granite systems . cnet news . 3 september 1996 . retrieved 16 october 2011 . cisco s brain drain continues . cnet news . 16 december 2003 . retrieved 16 october 2011 . management team . retrieved 12 june 2014 . 10 start ups to watch in 09 . network world inc. 5 january 2009 . retrieved 16 october 2011 . funding undisclosed amount from bechtolsheim and david cheriton arista networks names jayshree ullal president and ceo andreas bechtolsheim cdo and chairman press release . arista networks . 23 october 2008 . retrieved 12 june 2014 . arista networks crushes ipo targets soars after raising 226m . silicon valley business journal . 5 june 2014 . retrieved 25 september 2014 . cisco sues arista a rival run by former cisco employees . business insider . 5 december 2014 . retrieved 8 december 2014 . itc issues split determination in arista cisco patent dispute . the wall street journal . 24 june 2016 . retrieved 10 september 2016 . u.s. trade rep approves import ban on arista devices says rival cisco . fortune . 23 august 2016 . retrieved 10 september 2016 . arista eos key features . retrieved 12 june 2014 . eos provides a single binary image across all arista networking platforms veos running eos in a vm . arista networks . retrieved 12 june 2014 . using tcpdump for troubleshooting . 16 june 2011 . retrieved 12 june 2014 . linux fedora 12 as the foundation upon which the arista eos is built the joy of an open switch operating system . 1 may 2011 . retrieved 8 november 2011 . kill agents and watch them restart to see if eos is as resilient as we say it is . a b extensible modular operating system . retrieved 12 june 2014 . cloudvision topology agnostic management for cloud data centers . retrieved 12 june 2014 . cloudvision multi switch cli network management over xmpp . 23 august 2011 . retrieved 16 october 2011 . advanced event management aem . retrieved 12 june