Firmware vs software

networkingIT support

The distinction a vendor draws between code that is part of the device and code that runs on top of it - and the reason it decides who fixes your problem.

The line moves by vendor and it is rarely technical. On a network appliance the whole operating system is often called firmware; on a server the same layer would be an OS, and the firmware would be the BIOS and the controllers beneath it. What makes the distinction worth knowing is commercial and procedural: firmware and software frequently have different support lifecycles, different release cadences, different licences and different escalation paths inside the vendor. An engineer who says “that is a firmware issue” is often making a routing decision about which team owns it, not a claim about where the bug lives.

Also known as: fw vs sw, firmware or software

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