The Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) launched an open source SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS) for Service Providers that enables agile service creation and deployment at scale on any hardware, including white boxes.
ONOS, which will be released on December 5th, delivers a highly available, scalable SDN control plane featuring northbound and southbound open APIs and paradigms for a diversity of management, control, and service applications across mission critical networks.
On.Lab said ONOS allows providers to gradually migrate their existing networks to SDN without requiring instant forklift upgrades by supporting a diversity of southbound devices and interfaces in addition to OpenFlow. Initial use cases for ONOS focus on new, innovative services and applications for service provider and WAN networks. These include examples such as: multi-layer optimization and traffic engineering over packet optical core; seamless peering of SDN islands with the Internet; SDN-based WAN control with segment routing; bandwidth calendaring; bandwidth and network provisioning; and a variety of configuration applications.
Another really important ONOS use case is Network Functions as a Service (NFaaS) – this is a scalable, easy to deploy and manage NFV where the smallest unit of provisioning is a “service.” These services can be managed easily, scaled up or down and composed together to create new value-added services. NFaaS truly enables service innovation, network optimization and cost reduction. Examples of NFaaS include caching, deep packet inspection, load balancing and security applications.
Founding members who are funding and contributing to the ONOS initiative include AT&T, NTT Communications, Ciena, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel, NEC; and members who are collaborating and contributing to ONOS include Infoblox, SRI, Internet2, CNIT and Create-Net.
“Software-defined networking can radically reshape the wide area network,” said John Donovan, senior executive vice president, AT&T Technology & Operations. “The introduction of ONOS provides another open source SDN option designed for service provider networks with the potential to deliver the performance, scale, availability and core features that we value.”
“ONOS is built from scratch, from the ground-up, to be highly available, fast and extensible. It can be used to control existing equipment or new white boxes, allowing service providers to gain more control of their networks and reduce costs,” said Nick McKeown, professor of CS and EE at Stanford and faculty director of the Open Network Research Center.
“By now, SDN is deployed in data centers worldwide, based on proprietary software,” said Scott Shenker, professor of CS at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Open Network Research Center. “The next frontier for SDN is service provider networks, where large network operators need to program their networks to create new, differentiated services. To enable this, we need a highly available, scalable control plane such as ONOS upon which new services can be instantiated and deployed.”
“NTT Communications and ON.Lab are well aligned in our goals for developing SDN for service provider networks,” said Yukio Ito, senior vice president and board member at NTT Communications. “We have been at the forefront of deploying SDN in carrier networks. We recognize the need for an open source network OS that provides carrier grade features to deliver carrier grade services. With ONOS’ northbound abstractions we now have an opportunity to develop control, management, and configuration applications quickly. We are excited to pilot use cases on ONOS in 2015.”
http://onlab.us/
