Vendors Join ONF Edge Networking, Open Source Effort
A handful of suppliers have signed be members of the Open Networking Foundation and invest in the ONF’s Reference Design activities. The list includes ADTRAN, Dell, Edgecore Networks, EMC, and Juniper Networks.
"At Juniper Networks, we are huge proponents of the open-infrastructure movement,” said Juniper Networks CTO Bikash Koley. “In fact, as a testament to that, we open-sourced our Contrail SDN controller in 2013. We also became the first major network solution provider to incorporate P4 and P4Runtime earlier this year, enabling ubiquitous control across all our platforms. The industry's need for open-source solutions has only grown since then as service providers more and more are working to ensure that a majority their networks include open-source infrastructure to build best-of-breed solutions and encourage innovation. We are excited to be joining the Open Networking Foundation to continue fostering innovation in open networking."
Juniper and the other suppliers mentioned above will work with ONF service provider leadership to create blueprints for how to combine open and modular components for various edge cloud use cases. And they’ll work with the CSPs to implement actual solutions based on those blueprints.
The blueprint use cases include NFV Fabric-RD, an SDN-based spine-leaf data center fabric designed for edge applications. ODTN-RD, or open disaggregated transport network, is another of the use cases. It allows for open, multivendor optical networks.
Meanwhile, the SEBA-RD blueprint offers guidance on support SDN-enabled broadband access. It’s a lightweight reference design based on an R-CORD variant and support various virtualized access technologies at the carrier edge. Plus, ONF is working on a Unified, Programmable & Automated Network reference design. It will use SDN and P4 to allow for data plane programmability and network-embedded virtual network function acceleration.
ONF’s CSP leadership intends to begin the first implementations of solutions based on these blueprints this year. The ONF CSP group includes AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, NTT Group, and Turk Telekom.
"AT&T has been a strong advocate of ONF's open-source initiatives and we believe we are now at the cusp of deploying open source based solutions for next-generation broadband access, further driving open solutions to the edges of networks,” said Al Blackburn, AT&T and ONF TLT Vice-Chair. “Reference Designs are being formed to help ensure the success of this effort, and to clearly indicate to the ecosystem where we and our fellow operators are headed."
Edited by Maurice Nagle
