GEANT, the European research network formed last year through the integration of the TERENA and DANTE initiatives, has deployed the Open source SDN Network Operating System (ONOS) on its pan-European testbed network. The ONOS installation allows researchers to define, build, test and rebuild highly scalable, high capacity virtual networks quickly, easily and cost-effectively.
Specifically, GEANT is running a new Inter Cluster ONOS Network Application (ICONA) – developed by CREATE-NET and the University of Rome Tor Vergata/CNIT in collaboration with the ONOS project – to efficiently manage the intercommunication of geographically distributed ONOS clusters and deliver faster controller response time during network events such as failures or congested links.
GEANT’s GTS network is currently comprised of four points of presence (PoPs) located in Amsterdam, Bratislava, Lubiana and Prague, creating a software-defined network entirely based on OpenFlow. Each external entity (e.g. CREATE-NET and University of Rome) connected to the testbed exposes a “legacy” Border Gateway Protocol (BGP ) router that peers directly with the border router placed in the Amsterdam PoP of the GTS network, thus exchanging IP routes with the rest of the global network IP prefixes. This enables the entities connected to communicate together and with the rest of the universities and the research institutions attached to the global network. In fact, the Amsterdam PoP connects GTS directly with Internet2 in the U.S. Through ONOS’ application intent framework, the ONOS clusters are able to provide L2 connectivity between all the “legacy” routers connected at the edge of the network.
“ON.Lab and its ONOS network operating systems are a great example of emergent network paradigms that would be difficult or impossible to test or evaluate at full European scale without the infrastructure provided by the GEANT network and the virtualization capabilities provided by the GEANT Testbeds Service,” said Jerry Sobieski, GTS Activity Leader. “We are excited to work with ON.Lab to deploy ONOS across our GTS facilities as this allows us to showcase both the advanced capabilities ONOS delivers as well as the advanced capabilities of our testbed. GEANT’s mission is to facilitate this type of leading edge global network research to help deliver the next generation of networking.”
“We are very excited to participate in this worldwide SDN testbed deployment,” said CREATE-NET Research Director Elio Salvadori. “It gave us the perfect setting to test our ICONA application and it opens up even more opportunities for controlled testing of further SDN apps that we are currently developing on top of ONOS.”
“ONOS’ deployment on GEANT’s GTS is another major milestone for the ONOS project,” said Bill Snow, Vice President of Engineering at ON.Lab. “With the GTS connecting to Internet2 in the U.S. and, through them, to South America we now have the best and brightest minds from three continents linked together via pure OpenFlow-based networks running ONOS software. Drawing from a global collaborative community provides us with resources that can’t be matched and accelerates the pace of open SDN innovation by providing valuable insight, testing and feedback for ONOS to deliver the benefits of true SDN.”
