Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF), which has publicized several trials and demonstrations of transport software-defined networking (SDN) technology, last week announced what is perhaps its most advanced effort. The Madrid-based service provider says it has used its IETF-based Application Based Network Operations (ABNO) orchestrator-controller to tie together systems and SDN platforms from ADVA Optical Networking (Frankfurt: ADV), Ciena (NYSE: CIEN), Huawei, and Infinera (NASDAQ: INFN) in a multi-domain proof of concept demonstration. Telefónica says the demonstration illustrated how it could use the orchestrator-controller to create new services quickly across multi-vendor optical transport networks.
The trial saw Telefónica orchestrate domains via distributed control planes, which it says enables optimized path calculation to minimize use of network resources, yet provide greater scalability with faster, more efficient service restoration.
Telefónica used REST APIs northbound between the two controller layers. (The joint demonstration the Optical Internetworking Forum and Open Networking Foundation employed REST APIs in a similar fashion; see "OIF and ONF enjoy joint Transport SDN demonstration success.") The ABNO orchestrator-controller was able to acquire the network topology for each domain from the individual domain controllers, and then use this information to determine how to set up an end-to-end service. The orchestrator-controller then used the API to pass the request for service setup for each domain to the individual third-party domain controllers.
The three vendors involved in the trial offered both SDN and optical transport technology to the effort. For example, ADVA Optical Networking supplied four nodes of its SDN-enabled FSP 3000 ROADM capability as well as its new network hypervisor (see "OIF, ONF reveal vendor participants in SDN interoperability demo"). Ciena brought its Multilayer WAN Controller. The controller received requests from the ABNO orchestrator and then used its Navigate multilayer path computation engine to calculate an optimal path through Ciena's 5430 Packet-Optical Platform. It then used an open interface to the 5430 to request that the company's OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane signal the multi-hop connection and enable restoration in case of network faults.
Meanwhile, Huawei contributed its T-SDN Controller (a part of Huawei's SoftCom strategy portfolio) and OptiX OSN 8800 Intelligent Optical Transport Platforms, which were located in China. Driven by Telefónica’s ABNO orchestrator controller through a RESTful northbound interface, Huawei T-SDN controller interworked with the orchestrator and apps. Finally, Infinera supplied its Intelligent Transport Network featuring the DTN platform controlled via Infinera’s Open Transport Switch (OTS) SDN software. Telefónica was able to integrate its ABNO controller with the OTS's REST APIs to extract the transport layer topology and provision on-demand capacity. Telefónica previously had demonstrated network-as-a-service capabilities using the ABNO controller and the Infinera OTS (see "Telefonica I+D, Infinera demo SDN-based Network-as-a-Service capabilities").
"Software-defined networks allow operators to optimize the network utilization as well as to reduce our operational costs," said Javier Gavilán, planning and technology director for Transport, Core, Platforms and Mobile Devices at Telefónica. "Telefónica demonstrates its interested in SDN/NFV technologies as a way to evolve our networks to the future demands. We need to push the industry to have standard solutions, which enables interoperability between our vendors."
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