Huawei said it has partnered with the Open Networking Foundation and Open Network Lab through its Open Network Operating System platform to build an open ecosystem designed to support commercial carrier deployments of software-defined networking.
The SDN platform will support the ONOS platform, the company said, with plans to work with ONF and the network function virtualization-focused OPNFV community to create programmable SDN network architecture. Huawei added that the ONOS platform provides the “robust architecture design” needed to support carrier demands, and that it plans to offer operator requirements to the ONOS core platform.
“We will enrich southbound and northbound interfaces, and actively provide open source code to support ONOS with adapting to various SDN scenarios and build an open and healthy industry ecosystem,” said Zha Jun, president of Huawei’s fixed network product line and a member of the ONOS board.
ON.Lab launched ONOS late last year, looking to offer a scalable SDN control plan “featuring northbound and southbound open APIs and paradigms for a diversity of management, control and service applications across mission critical networks.” The consortium explained that the ONOS platform will allow telecom providers to “gradually migrate their existing networks to SDN without requiring instant forklift upgrades by supporting a diversity of southbound devices and interfaces in addition to OpenFlow.”
Founding members of the ONOS initiative include AT&T, NTT Communications, Ciena, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel and NEC. The initiative recently welcomed Cisco Systems and SK Telecom to its organization.
Huawei last year struck a deal with China Telecom’s Beijing branch to jointly develop a commercial SDN applicable to an Internet data center. The deployment plans were based on Huawei’s Flow Engine product, which it said offers centralized monitoring and control over a telecom’s network resources, allowing administrators to dynamically allocate resources and optimize performance.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter
Photo copyright: / 123RF Stock Photo
