China Telecom selects ZTE for resource pool pre-commercial trial SDN project
China Telecom has selected ZTE for the provincial cloud resource pool pre-commercial trial software-defined network (SDN) project. The project encompasses seven Chinese provinces: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan and Jiangxi.
SDN is a developing architecture designed to enable network control using application program interfaces (APIs), or open programmatic interfaces like OpenFlow. The technology helps identify the best route to direct traffic flows across a network. Whenever a packet of data is forwarded to a network switch, principles built into the switch determine where to forward the packet to next. Though still an emerging technology, China has begun to embrace SDN.
ZTE is a major Chinese telecom equipment and systems company. Under the collaboration, ZTE will provide China Telecom full series of SDN solution, including ZENIC vDC controller, Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS), V6000 vRouter, and virtual Firewall (vFW). The SDN controller, VxLAN gateway, virtual switch at Network Virtual Endpoint (NVE) and virtual Firewall will be delivered using virtual machines, according to the companies.
China Telecom said it will launch a cloud resource pool capable of supporting platforms and IT systems. The company said the need for support for automatic resource pool deployment, multi-tenant service, resource pool interconnection while managing construction costs, is driven by the service’s popularity.
The news follows ZTE winning a 47% share of the bid for China Unicom’s IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) network project in November. ZTE has long been an active partner of China Unicom , especially with IMS network construction. The company originally won a bid to to become the leading partner in the construction of China Unicom’s IMS network in 2013.
China Telecom said the first phase of the provincial cloud resource pre-commercial trial SDN project is the beginning of further introduction of SDN to the resource pool. The company noted it is the first commercial project that supports the CTNet2025 network transformation strategy published by China Telecom in 2016.
