The ONAP community announced the 7th ONAP release, codenamed Guilin after the Chinese city of the same name in China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
New features in ONAP Guilin focus on 5G wireless networks and open RAN, along with numerous improvements to the code quality, security, and maturity.
New use cases include:
- 5G Network slicing – including the capability of orchestrating network slices in all three domains – RAN, Transport, and Core
- O-RAN Integration – the ONAP interfaces have been aligned to be compatible with O-RAN Alliance specifications and the O-RAN Software Community modules. Specifically, Guilin adds support for the A1 interface (O-RAN A1-AP v1.1),
- Cloud Native Network Functions – Moving in parallel with the evolving architecture of the network functions ONAP orchestrates, the community significantly improved the way ONAP handles Cloud Network Functions (CNFs). It is now more aligned with the way ONAP handles VNFs and PNFs, leading the way to orchestrating hybrid network services using any combination of technologies.
Other enhancements to the ONAP Blueprints includes a new Standard Defined VNF Event Stream (VES) event for Fault Management (FM) / Performance Management (PM) Data Collection, the first use of Machine Learning in Self-Organizing Networks (SON), and greater support for 5G RAN Wireless Network Resource Model (NRM) with Service Modeling and Definition and Intent Based Network supporting intent-drive 5G slice creation.
Multi-Domain Optical Network Services (MDONS) first introduced in Frankfurt, now supports Inter Domain Link (IDL)/Path Optimization for Optical Transport Network (OTN) links across multiple optical domains. This enables improved policy-driven automated service operations and LCM across cross-carrier optical domains.