OpenDaylight Project Releases SDN Upgrade
The OpenDaylight Project designed to accelerate the rollout of software-defined networking announced its third SDN software release along with the formation of a 12-member industry advisory group.
The project backed by the Linux Foundation said Monday (June 29) its Lithium release for SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) beefs up security and automation while adding new APIs, six new protocols and networking services targeting cloud platforms in datacenters.
As OpenDaylight momentum grows, project officials said the open source platform has been deployed in use cases ranging from NFV and "network on demand" to flow programming using OpenFlow to the Internet of Things (IoT).
Open source SDN and NFV approaches continue to make inroads with telecom carriers such as AT&T, NTT and SK Telecom along with hyper-scalers like Google and Facebook. OpenDaylight was among the open source networking technologies highlighted during the recent Open Networking Summit.
OpenDaylight said it expects the new Lithium capabilities like network virtualization and service chaining to be quickly adopted by its members, which include global telecom and cable carriers along with network equipment vendors.
The group said Lithium upgrades include scaling and performance boosts in core architectural components along with new cloud network services like native support for the OpenStack network-as-a-service Neutron framework. Neutron support aims at ease device design along with user and group security policies as well as customizing firewalls, load balancing and other application network services, project officials said.
Tighter integration of OpenStack and OpenDaylight via Neutron would improve how SDN controllers interact with OpenStack, project member AT&T said.
Among the new security and automation features are the adoption of the Unified Secure Channel to tighten links between the open source SDN software and distributed network equipment.
Among the new APIs incorporated into Lithium are a controller that manages network services and resources based on network policies. This along with a new approach for optimizing application layer traffic is intended to augment existing group-based policies built into the project's Helium release last fall.
A distributed virtual router capability also has been added, the project said.
Half a dozen new networking protocols cover implementations ranging from control and provisioning of wireless access points to IoT data management.
The Lithium release illustrates growing interest in open source approaches to SDN and NFV on from both vendors and end users, project backers asserted.
The OpenDaylight Project also announced the formation of an advisory group to help push the developer community coalescing around the effort. Members include representatives from: Arizona State University AT&T, CableLabs, Caltech, China Mobile, China Telecom, Comcast, Deutsche Telecom, Nasdaq, wireless carriers Orange and T-Mobile and Telefónica I+D.
The Open DayLight Project annual summit is scheduled for July 27-31 in Santa Clara, Calif. The initiative includes 466 individual members who have so far contributed more than 2.3 million lines of code to the SDN/NFV deployment effort.
