Open Source Networking—the next phase?

Open Source Networking Days in Stockholm, a Linux Foundation networking event

Ericsson is strongly promoting several open source initiatives in the Orchestration, SDN, NFV, and Cloud technology areas, thus accelerating innovation and industry adoption of new technologies as part of our overall vision for 5G. As part of Ericsson’s collaboration and deep involvement in many open source projects such as ONAP, OPNFV, ODL, and FD.io, we have organized and hosted this Open Source Networking Days in Stockholm.

Panel on 5G evolution and use cases.

The main idea behind this event is to bring all the LF networking projects together under one umbrella and closer to each region to increase the awareness among the community, vendors, service providers and various partners. We’ve received overwhelming response from the community and Ericsson attendees. More than 120 people have registered for the event and close to 100 people have attended the event. This was fantastic.

We had impressive list of speakers represented by operators, SDO’s, and communication equipment vendors, who presented and discussed many opensource projects such as ONAP, ODL, FD-io/DPDK, OPNFV covering key topics such as orchestration, automation, analytics, SDN, and NFVI.

The final session was a panel about 5G evolution and 5G uses cases. Some of the key discussions focused on SDO and Opensource collaboration, NFV and Network evolution to 5G, overall LF networking projects, harmonization of opensource, industry fragmentation, strong API foundations, stability, and scale.

SDO’s open source collaboration

Recently, ONAP and MEF announced their collaboration. In the past, SDO’s write specifications and these specifications appear in the RFP’s and RFI’s and vendors follow the specifications and create products complying with various standards. This way interoperability and backward compatibility is maintained. With the introduction of opensource, there are more innovation and disruption starting to take place. For example, instead of just writing specifications, MEF is writing code and contributing to open source. The LSO Presto NRP API is supported within OpenDaylight SDN controller plug-in.

There are lots of disruption and innovation happening in our industry. At this juncture, as responsible industry leaders, we need to foster innovation, automation, collaboration, and speed, but at the same time ensure that there is no fragmentation among various opensource projects, SDO’s and various other solutions. Also, ensure API’s, proper interoperability, backward compatibility, east -west and north- south interfaces are defined well so that this network transformation journey is smooth. Below is the list of all sessions. The presentations link will be available in a week’s time in this blog.

Opensource Networking Summit, Stockholm: Sessions

• Introduction: Balaji Ethirajulu, Director Marketing, Ericsson
• Welcome & session — from NFV to 5G: Mats Karlsson A, Vice President, Head of Portfolio & Architecture, Ericsson
• Open source networking projects: Heather Kirksey, Director OPNFV
• MEF and open source collaboration: Pascal Menezes, CTO MEF
• NFV & SDN transformation — operators perspective: Tommy Ljunggren, Group Director, Architecture and security, VEON
• Break
• NFV related open source activities in DOCOMO: Gerald Kunzmann, NTT DOCOMO
• Accelerating the software-defined data plane with FD.io and DPDK: Ray Kinsella, Software Architect, Intel
• Opendaylight — fueling SDN transformation: Kyle MacDonald, Strategic Advisor, Redhat
• Lunch
• ONAP architecture overview: Chris Donley, ONAP TSC member & architecture subcommittee, Huawei
• Creating a secure ONAP: Stephen Terrill, ONAP TSC member & security subcommittee, Ericsson
• Model driven TOSCA based orchestration: Amir Levy, Director, Technical Market Development, Cloudify
• Break
• The value of open source for both providers and users: John Zannos, Chief Revenue Officer, Inocybe
• Panel — 5G evolution and use cases: Balaji Ethirajulu, moderator. Heather Kirksey, Mats Karlsson A, Chris Donley and John Zannos, panelists.

Click the following link for all sessions presentations.