The Common NFVI Telco Taskforce (CNTT), which is an open industry taskforce hosted by Linux Foundation and GSMA, has published its initial common Reference Model and first Reference Architecture with the goal of building of operationally-efficient, open source, SDN and NFV infrastructures.
“This initial release represents the first tangible output of CNTT,” said Heather Kirksey, vice president, Community and Ecosystem Development, the Linux Foundation. “In the short time since ONS North America, the community has already reached milestones around creation of the Reference Model and first Reference Architecture. We have also initiated significant discussion around Reference Implementation along with commencement of enhancements to OVP within OPNFV. I am very pleased to see the focused delivery of this group and our ability to align the industry and accelerate innovation, especially in the advance of 5G. It’s incredible to witness such deep collaboration and integration among operators and vendors from across the globe.”
“The speed with which this group has been established and produced its first tangible results are testament to the close cooperation and collaboration of its industry members,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology Officer, GSMA. “A common framework and approach will accelerate adoption and deployment in the 5G era and we look forward to aligning further with our partners on this important project.”
Initially organized early in 2019, CNTT held its first community-wide, face-to-face gathering in Paris this July, with more than 80 operator and vendor participants in attendance; the successful three-day event enabled collaborative discussion on next steps.
Following that initial meeting, the CNTT is working closely with taskforce members to refine the NFVI Reference Model, define a limited number of Reference Architectures, develop testing and verification requirements, and work with the OPNFV Verification Program (OVP) to define a global VNF compliance and validation lifecycle. This work will shorten the on-boarding effort for VNFs, accelerate time to revenue, and reduce costs for both VNF vendors and operators. Relying on a ground breaking collaborative model between the GSMA, the Linux Foundation, and the telecommunications vendor ecosystem, the group is creating a suite of tangible specifications to be hosted by the GSMA, and code to be created and hosted within OPNFV.
Preliminary documentation — including the first Reference Model — are available in CNTT GitHub repository
“Since its formation earlier this year, the CNTT community has made tremendous progress in building out the foundational elements of a NFVI and VFN lifecycle framework, as well as creating alignment on a discrete, compliant and verified set of NFV infrastructures for the telco ecosystem,” said Mark Cottrell, assistant vice president, Network Cloud, AT&T Labs.
https://cntt-n.github.io/CNTT/doc/ref_model/chapters/chapter01.html#1.3
