Open Networking Foundation Drives Commercialisation of SDN
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Software-Defined Networking (SDN), completed its third semi-annual PlugFest designed to drive interoperability, deployment, and commercialization of SDN and the OpenFlow™ protocol. Hosted June 3-7 at the Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE), the first ONF certified lab for conformance testing, the event was attended by nearly 50 network engineers from 20 member companies with the common goal of ensuring that new SDN protocols work across all of their products. This year’s event saw more than 90 percent of member companies participating in testing of OpenFlow 1.3.
“This PlugFest showed that ONF has successfully encouraged implementation of OpenFlow 1.3 within its membership,” said Michael Haugh, senior manager market development at Ixia and chair of the ONF Testing & Interoperability Working Group. “Event participants were able to accomplish an equivalent of two months of quality assurance (QA) testing in a about week, complete unique testing that could take multiple months in a QA lab. The breadth of participation also allowed them to resolve features and interoperability issues with different vendors.”
During the event, member companies had the opportunity to test new software features and products that have not yet been tested for interoperability with other vendors’ software and hardware products. OpenFlow versions 1.0, 1.2, and 1.3 were tested in commercial and test controllers and hardware and virtual switches. The event also allowed member companies to work in a neutral environment to test implementations of OpenFlow-based SDN that would be commercially applied to service provider, data center, and enterprise markets.
The addition of OpenFlow 1.3 allowed member companies to address complex network behavior, optimize performance, and leverage a richer set of capabilities. Implementation of OpenFlow 1.3 also allowed for innovative test cases that spanned into performing match actions and functions in IPv6 and MPLS. IPv6 has become the standard in the data center, and the PlugFest testing shows the ability to add new resources and functions that make SDN and the OpenFlow protocol more scalable. In addition, the test cases for MPLS showed the movement of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol outside of the data center, with successful implementations performed to allow service providers greater control of the network with open and interoperable software.
“ONF PlugFests are critical to fostering deployments and enhancing implementations of OpenFlow-based SDN,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “Through interoperability testing, ONF helps product developers get their implementations working properly and assures their customers of a supply of interoperable products. I was particularly happy to see the broad turnout for OpenFlow 1.3.”
The next ONF PlugFest will be held at the InCNTRE lab November 2013.
About ONF
Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 90 members whose mission is to advance the commercialization and use of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol. ONF will accelerate the delivery and use of SDN and OpenFlow technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: http://www.opennetworking.org.
