The P4 programming language is of rising interest to operators which want to adopt software-defined networking (SDN), and Google is behind the latest project of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the platform for many of these telco-grade initiatives. The search giant has contributed code for three protocols to an open source project called Stratum, which will use P4 and open interfaces to manage large networks for operators and data centers. The group aims to release open source code early next year for multiple networking platforms. As well as Google, the project members so far include switch-chip vendors Barefoot Networks, Broadcom, Cavium and Mellanox; plus China Unicom and Tencent of China and Dell EMC. Google said it would “help grease the…