Guru Parulkar, Executive Director of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), provides an overview of this week's operator-led conference in Silicon Valley, which featured presentations from ONF’s operator leadership: AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, NTT Group, and Turk Telekom.
A major accomplishment for 2018 was ONF's release of its initial set of open source Reference Designs, which target edge and access clouds infrastructure. These are “blueprints” for how to put common modular components together to create platforms based on open source. They leverage the ONF's prior work with CORD and M-CORD.
One big item of news from this week's conference is AT&T's announcement that it has launched the first SDN-enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) field trials in two cities with over 100 customers.
It's a really exciting time at AT&T not only because of the upcoming 5G launch later this month but also because of the many other areas of innovation underway in the network, said Andre Fuetsch, CTO of AT&T and President of AT&T Labs, in a keynote address at the ONF Connect conference in Santa Clara, California.
Some highlights:
AT&T is actively developing the ONF Software-defined Broadband Access (SEBA) reference design. It has two field trials underway using 10 GPON technology. This marks the first field deployment of SEBA, which is expected to be an enabler of edge cloud capabilities.
AT&T is handling 242 petabytes of traffic per day, 53% of which is video.
The move to NFV/SDN began in earnest in 2014 and so far the company has virtualized 65% of its network. The stated goal is to virtualize 75% by 2020.
The decision to adopt whitebox switches in the network is a key differentiator for AT&T, especially as capabilities move toward the edge.
In 2017, AT&T announced its first field trials of whiteboxes.
AT&T is now ready to move forward with the deployment of 60,000 whitebox routers in cell site towers across its network.
These cell site whitebox gateway routers will use a software stack from AT&T's Vyatta division.
AT&T has published its specifications the white box cell site gateway router. This has become the basis for the Disaggregated Network Operating System (DANOS) project, which is now being hosted by the Linux Foundation.
The cell site routers integrate into its Open Network Automation Project (ONAP) implementation. This is powering the 5G network.
AT&T is also deploying whiteboxes as top-of-rack switches in its data centers. It is also deploying whiteboxes in its global POPs, including recent installations in Singapore, Toronto, and Amsterdam.
AT&T is supporting the O-RAN Alliance for virtualizing the radio access network.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chairwoman of Huawei, was arrested in Vancouver, Canada on December 1st at the request of the U.S. government, which is seeking her extradition, according to multiple news sources. U.S. authorities reportedly are investigating violations of economic sanctions on Iran.
Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Weng) is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.
A biography on Huawei's website says Meng Wanzhou joined the company in 1993 and has previously held the positions of Director of the International Accounting Dept, CFO of Huawei Hong Kong, and President of the Accounting Mgmt Dept. She is credited with the founding of five shared service centers around the world, the completion of Huawei's Global Payment Center in Shenzhen, leading an eight-year partnership with IBM focused on Integrated Financial Services.
BT removed Huawei gear from core network functions following its acquisition of EE three years ago, according to The Financial Times.
The report says BT will also avoid the use of Huawei gear in its 5G core although it may use other infrastructure products from Huawei. This follows warnings from British intelligence agencies that Huawei could pose a national security risk. No technical details were reported.
ADVA introduced a compact cell site gateway device for providing Carrier Ethernet and IP service demarcation for small cells deployed outdoors in locations such as walls or lampposts.
The ADVA FSP 150-GO102Pro, which is billed as the world’s smallest cell site gateway device, delivers precise time and frequency synchronization. It features automated testing and in-service monitoring and is available in two sizes. A hardened housing is sealed against water, moisture, and dust.
ADVA says this single device with standardized software-defined networking (SDN) interfaces offers a unique combination of Carrier Ethernet and IP features together with the advanced synchronization capabilities required for emerging technologies such as LTE-Advanced and 5G. The ADVA FSP 150-GO102Pro features a comprehensive set of protocols and tools for fast and efficient service activation, testing and monitoring. It also empowers operators to take advantage of bandwidth slicing and auto-provisioned bandwidth services.
“Our FSP 150-GO102Pro is the ultimate outdoor demarcation technology. It ensures the highest quality of service even in the harshest conditions. This phenomenally versatile device empowers operators to deliver reliable, programmable mobile backhaul connectivity without investing in expensive cabinets or power-hungry air conditioning systems,” said Stephan Rettenberger, SVP, marketing and investor relations, ADVA. “We worked closely with major wholesale service providers to develop our FSP 150-GO102Pro. The solution is specifically engineered to meet their exacting requirements and facilitate their 5G ambitions. It offers full Layer 2 and 3 service demarcation with a complete set of Carrier Ethernet and routing features. The FSP 150-GO102Pro even provides highly automated zero touch provisioning for effortless installation and activation.”
“The latest addition to our market-leading portfolio of multi-layer edge technology responds to an urgent demand for a demarcation product that can be easily installed in any location. Versatile mounting options, the market’s smallest form factor and an extended temperature range without the need for fans make our FSP 150-GO102Pro ideal for wholesale operators looking to quickly and affordably connect small cell sites,” said Ulrich Kohn, director, technical marketing, ADVA. “The launch of our FSP 150-GO102Pro means there no longer needs to be any compromise on the quality of mobile backhaul connectivity services, even in the toughest conditions. It ensures high-capacity service demarcation with the lowest available power consumption. What’s more, our FSP 150-GO102Pro technology is fully prepared for central SDN control, creating a truly future-proof architecture.”
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Multi-Domain, Application-Defined Interconnection Orchestration. PoC Participants: AT&T, Equinix, and Ciena. This group won the prestigious MEF18 PoC Gold Award.
Speakers: Marco Naveda, Principal Architect, Office of the CTO, Ciena and Oleg Berzin, Senior Director, Technology Innovation, Equinix.
Software Defined Interconnection Exchanges enable public/private peering using secure interconnection across a multi-domain global virtual fabric and federated orchestration using open LSO APIs. This can enable @scale deployment of massive IoT with edge clouds, network clouds, and public clouds per application slice. Secure IoT services are also possible with machine inference engines at the enterprise edge. A broad ecosystem of enterprises, edge cloud providers, network cloud providers, and public cloud providers can leverage and benefit from this global virtual fabric.
In this PoC, the Ciena Blue Planet mulit-domain orchestrator is unifying the enterprise customer experience across the micro edge, the macro edge, and hyper-scale cloud. The PoC illustrates interworking between the Blue Planet orchestrator and the open source ONAP orchestrator supported by AT&T and others collaborating within The Linux Foundation. The PoC incorporates LSO Interlude and LSO Legato interfaces for service orchestration.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Pocket-sized, Model-driven Networks. PoC Participants: Vodafone, Ciena, and DGIT Systems.
Speakers: Greg Tilton, CEO, DGIT Systems; Chris Lowman, Innovation & Architecture Team, Vodafone and Sam Torrente, IT Operations Transformation, Ciena.
This PoC uses LSO Legato and LSO Sonata APIs -- augmented by some additional, extended APIs -- to configure a network model, learn the model in a business system through an API, compose a product using the learned model in a catalog, and then publish the composed product to customers (audience), who can then order and manage the product via a web mobile application.
Ciena creates the network within their Blue Planet environment, then exposes the service models through a TMF633 catalog API within the LSO Legato context, allowing the DGIT System Telflow to learn about the model and use it to create an offer for market.
The mobile users will then be able to order and managed their offers through a mobile web application
This PoC shows that a common set of APIs can be used for LSO Sonata and LSO Cantata use cases and can drive alternative digital channels. It also shows that a model-driven presentation of networks though the LSO Legato API use case can be used by IT systems to dynamically bundle services to create market offers.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Self-Service, Agile, Orchestrated Cloudlink™. PoC Participants: Zayo and Ciena.
Speaker: Mike Stein, Product Manager, Zayo.
With the adoption of the Cloud, customers today enjoy the flexibility of being able to spin up and spin down resources on a consumption, as-needed basis via their cloud service provider. Until recently, that same capability did not exist in the network service provider domain. This created a dynamic where large Cloud Service Providers (CPs) were able to engage with a customer on a lightweight and nimble basis, whereas large Network Service Providers (NSPs) were viewed as monolithic, slow to engage, and inflexible.
With CloudLink, Zayo and Ciena (Blue Planet) have partnered to combine best-in-class SDN technology and trusted API integration with large CPs, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Zayo Cloud. This product evolution delivers the necessary agile, self-service, and elastic connectivity needed to enable a customer to rapidly provision private connectivity to the public cloud. These capabilities are showcased in this MEF18 PoC, which applies MEF’s LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) architecture and open LSO APIs (Legato, Sonata, Interlude, and Presto) in a production environment to automate the end-to-end delivery of CE services across a multi-vendor network, from an enterprise site to the cloud.
The outcome, CloudLink by Zayo, provides an extremely flexible solution that allows a customer to consume network resources in the same way they consume cloud resources - on an as-needed, consumption basis. The benefit to the network and cloud service providers includes faster time to revenue and increased customer satisfaction, making CloudLink a powerful solution for all parties.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) has been adopted in the industry; now, with CloudLink, cloud connectivity as a service is a reality.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - End-to-end Service Orchestration of E-LAN over Multiple Domains via the LSO Interlude Interface and Across Multiple Vendors. PoC participants: Eurofiber and Inmanta.
Speaker: Jeroen van der Laan, Software Solution Architect, Eurofiber.
Zero-touch automation of network services across domains and technologies provides many business opportunities. At MEF18, Eurofiber demonstrates end-to-end service orchestration of E-LAN services over multiple providers and across vendors and technologies. The company relies on the Inmanta Service Orchestrator to achieve fully automated fulfillment and management of the E-LAN services. End-to-end service orchestration results in much faster delivery, more flexibility, and higher reliability.
This PoC is the result of the actual Proof of Concept that has been created within the Eurofiber Group together with Inmanta. In the Showcase, a customer can order (or adapt) an E-LAN service by providing a few parameters to the business application. Using these parameters, all other configuration of the service is automatically deducted. The orchestrator applies the changes to the network services and infrastructure in a reliable and structured way, guaranteeing end-to-end consistency across domains.
Eurofiber NL and UNET are part of the Eurofiber Group, a fast-growing international provider of industry-leading digital infrastructure. With its fiber-optic network and high-quality datacenters, Eurofiber provides companies, government bodies, and non-profit organizations with a future-proof infrastructure. An open infrastructure that enables customers to thrive, innovate, and reach their full potential is the foundation for a smart society.
Inmanta is a spin-off of the University of Leuven and enables CSPs to deliver their services much faster and with more flexibility. Its end-to-end service orchestrator automates and streamlines the entire service lifecycle. Instead of months and years to deliver services and release new features, Inmanta reduces the process to a matter of weeks and minutes.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
Intel and Huawei 2.6GHz 5G NR Interoperability and Development Testing (IoDT) based on the 3GPP Release 15 global standard September version.
The IoDT test is the world's first 2.6GHz 5G interoperability test under SA network and is a key milestone towards accelerating the maturity of the 2.6GHz 5G NR ecosystem
The testing involved Intel’s 5G Mobile Trial Platform (MTP) and Huawei's latest 5G NR (New Radio) base station supporting 2.6GHz with 160MHz bandwidth.
DE-CIX announced that Internet Exchange (IX) in the New York metro area has exceeded a key milestone of 200 unique Autonomous System Number (ASN) networks. This makes it the largest Carrier and Data Center-Neutral Internet Exchange in New York, according to the company.
“200 networks is a significant milestone to achieve and especially nice to have accomplished in just four and half years. It is a testament to how the neutral exchange model, with its partnership opportunities, can transform a market. Our model has allowed DE-CIX New York to become the leading platform in New York and the second largest exchange on the entire eastern seaboard,” comments Ed d’Agostino, Vice President and General Manager, DE-CIX North America. “Our focus on data center enablement – along with enhanced service capabilities has allowed our customers to add significant additional connectivity that the New York market has ever experienced. We are well on our way to helping make New York the premier interconnection location in North America.”
The company also notes that customers connected to DE-CIX New York can peer with networks locally connected on DE-CIX European Internet Exchanges without having to buy transport, a remote port or even a local cross-connection. Specifically, networks connected in New York via a local Point of Presence (PoP) or connected over transport to the New York IX can:
Reach DE-CIX Frankfurt, the world’s largest IX by peak traffic, extending access to more than 850 networks
Benefit from extended reach to other DE-CIX Internet Exchanges including Hamburg, Munich, Dusseldorf, Marseille and Istanbul—enabling connectivity to hundreds of additional networks
