Neptune, the Israeli consortium for network programming, announced that it has performed a general demonstration of its technologies as part of its mission to build on the software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) technologies that are currently under development.
Neptune is seeking to significantly reduce the time required to deploy new services and new service types, enable more efficient use of network and computational resources, and facilitate faster and more intelligent response to network events.
The latest demonstration by Neptune included four industry firsts, as follows:
1. A multi-vendor vCPE demonstration, in which a single service provider OpenStack controller established end-to-end services terminating on virtual CPE (vCPE) from three vendors, ADVA, Telco Systems and RAD, all running on top of a Mellanox switch and HCA adaptor.
2. Satellite network vendor Gilat demonstrated vCPE capabilities in a satellite ground segment gateway, including integration of tactical mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) UHF radio networks into an SDN and NFV-based multi-vendor heterogeneous virtual RAN (vRAN) based on technology developed by Elbit Systems Land and C4i.
3. The above demonstration also featured Open Mobile Edge Cloud (OMEC) with the first fully virtual cellular base station (from modem to management) developed by ASOCS and accelerated by a pool of network attached programmable hardware accelerators.
4.Transport of the common public radio interface (CPRI) standard over microwave by Ceragon Networks.
In addition, ECI Telecom demonstrated how its multi-layer service app is able to perform fast recovery from optical-layer faults employing an ONOS controller combined with OpenFlow optical extensions, and ADVA presented MEC for the delivery of enterprise services.
The demonstration was conducted at a Bezeq International facility, supported by equipment located at four other sites, and attended by outgoing chief scientist of the Israel Ministry of Economy and Industry, Avi Hasson, the head of the chief scientist’s technological infrastructure division, Ilan Peled, Neptune chair Dr. Yaakov Stein, and representatives of the consortium members.
Neptune was founded in 2014 to develop methods to automate and programmatically manage service provider networks, irrespective of underlying network technologies leveraging SDN and NFV. Backed by the Israel Innovations Authority (formerly the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Economy and Industry), consortium members include: ADVA (Israel), ASOCS, Bezeq International, Ceragon Networks, ECI Telecom, Elbit Systems, Gilat Satellite Networks, Mellanox Technologies, RAD and Telco Systems (BATM Group).
The consortium also includes research institutions Ariel University, Ben-Gurion University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Holon Technological Institute, the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, the Lev Academic Center in Jerusalem, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University.
