The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) are collaborating on Transport Software Defined Networking (Transport SDN) demonstrations being conducted this year in several carrier-hosted labs.
The testing, which will begin in late August in a number of global carrier labs, will leverage the OIF’s carrier representation, knowledge of transport networks, and worldwide interoperability testing experience for optical equipment, with ONF’s leadership role for the OpenFlow protocol and SDN architecture. OpenFlow extensions for optical transport developed in the ONF Optical Transport Working Group will be prototyped in the demo.
The OIF is currently working on several initiatives supporting Transport SDN including a carrier-driven Requirements Document and an SDN Framework Document identifying SDN application programming interfaces for a carrier environment.
ONF currently has a number of carrier-focused initiatives underway, including SDN transport, mobile and wireless network applications, carrier-grade SDN, and large-scale network migration.
“We expect SDN, in tandem with Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), to shape the future of telecommunications networks,” said Vishnu Shukla, of Verizon and OIF president. “It is exciting to have these two prominent groups combining resources, innovative thinking and industry support to put together a very relevant and important demo.”
“We are pleased to join forces with the OIF, who have been contributing to our efforts to extend OpenFlow to support optical transport networks,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “The OIF/ONF Transport SDN demonstration will showcase how transport networks will benefit from SDN and NFV.”
