The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) hosted its second semi-annual PlugFest event to drive interoperability, certification, and commercialization of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol for service provider, data center, and enterprise applications.
About 20 ONF member companies participated in the event, whish was held at the Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE) at Indiana University during the week of October 8-12, 2012.
The event provided participating ONF member companies the opportunity to test interoperability and enhance implementations of OpenFlow versions 1.0 and 1.2 in commercial and test controllers and switches. Applications that were tested included topology discovery and layer 2-3 use cases. Additionally, new tests extended to virtual machines and testing of OF Config 1.1.
“This October’s event proved to be a success and highlighted the evolution of OpenFlow-based SDN,” said Mike Haugh, senior marketing product manager at Ixia and chair of the Testing & Interoperability Working Group. “We not only saw growth in participants and products being tested, but we also saw a movement towards commercial controllers that are available on the market. This uptick in participation and commercial products validates the maturity of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol for version 1.0 and continued effort going forward.”
The ONF also announced a new conformance testing program, with InCNTRE being selected as the first certified conformance testing lab. The new program is being administered by the Testing & Interoperability Working Group and allows ONF member companies to apply for OpenFlow certification of their products. Currently, the lab will be certifying OpenFlow 1.0 switches. The pilot program is underway and the certification is expected to be available in December.
