LF Networking (LFN) announced the fourth major release of Open Network Automation Project (ONAP) code.
Key advancements in ONAP Dublin include:
- New Blueprints – a new residential connectivity blueprint, Broadband Service (BBS), to demonstrate multi-gigabit residential connectivity over PON using ONAP. The multi-release 5G blueprint adds enhancements to PNF support, performance management, fault management (PM, FM) monitoring, homing using the physical cell ID (PCI), and progress on modeling to support end-to-end network slicing in subsequent releases. The CCVPN blueprint now includes dynamic addition of services and bandwidth on-demand.
- OVP Enhancements: In April, an expanded OPNFV Verification Program (OVP) was launched that includes VNF verification through publicly-available VNF compliance test tooling based on requirements developed within the ONAP community. While OVP checks against industry-wide requirements, it does not check VNF compliance against operator-specific requirements (e.g. VM flavors, dataplane acceleration technologies, and so on). For this reason, Dublin adds a Vendor Software Product (VSP) compliance check in SDC to fill this gap.
- Standards Alignment: Illustrating the significance of ONAP both as a reference architecture and reference code for an automation platform, LF Networking collaborates with standards bodies (e.g. 3GPP, ETSI NFV ISG, ETSI ZSM ISG, MEF, and TM Forum) to provide reference architectures for standards development.
- The design time components includes a new version of the Controller Design Studio (CDS) for model driven configuration and lifecycle management of VNFs, internationalization and localization support in the Portal framework, and basic PNF package validation.
- The runtime software includes orchestration support for cloud native network functions (CNF) through support for k8s cloud regions, with support for Azure and StarlingX cloud regions as well.
- The Policy project has several changes changes that allow service providers to create new policies, TOSCA policies, and policy types outside the development cycle of ONAP. The Dublin release has support for multisite applications in DMaaP.
LFN also noted the addition of six new members to ONAP: Aarna Networks, Loodse, the LIONS Center at Pennsylvania State University, Matrixx Software, VoerEir AB, and XCloud Networks.
The next ONAP release will be called El Alto.
“It’s great to see such robust ecosystem growth with new deployments, new commercial adoption, and new members,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Orchestration, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. “ONAP is now a focal point for industry alignment around MANO, conformance and verification, and standards collaboration. Dublin specifically brings 5G network automation for secure, standards-aligned global deployments on any cloud of any size or location.”
“Beyond the technical accomplishments, Dublin highlights the maturity of our ONAP Community,” said Catherine Lefèvre, ONAP TSC Chair. “The relationship between carriers and vendors has grown even stronger through cooperation in many areas, including development, security and integration. For example, Swisscom and Samsung played significant roles in this release. Their collaboration with other carriers and vendors highlights the ‘innovate together’ spirit that prevails within the ONAP community. Swisscom drove the broadband service use case, collaborating with member vendors of the ONAP open source community in development and testing. Samsung performed penetration tests that identified new requirements that were taken up as a priority by the ONAP Security Subcommittee led by Orange.”
