Nokia has made its router network operating system available on GitHub for virtual testing.

The company announced its Data Center Fabric solution two years ago, built on its Service Router Linux OS.

The SR Linux container is now available on the GitHub public container registry for testing, without requiring registration, payment, or an existing Nokia contract.

"SR Linux container has the same code inside that actually runs on our hardware platforms," Nokia system engineer Roman Dodin said in a blog post.

"There is no control or data plane deviations, so by using this image in your CI [continuous integration] pipelines you can be sure that when deployed to production, it will behave the same."

There is a throughput limitation on dataplane interfaces and the applications will restart once in a month, if you use it without a license, however.

"It was a deal breaker for me to make SR Linux distributed that way," Dodin added on Twitter.

"Even though there are VM and container based images you can download, none of them you can PULL from a registry. Making it pullable is key for CI pipelines and rapid development and testing."

Nokia developed its NOS from the ground up, rather than upgrading an older system. This, it claims, allows for new features, including YANG-first APIs, Protobuf based SDK, a disaggregated application stack, and programmable CLI.

When Nokia first announced its Data Center Fabric, it gained Equinix, BT, and Apple as its first major customers.