OIF, ONF plan SDN T-API transport API interoperability demonstration

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) will partner to demonstrate interoperable use of a software-defined networking (SDN) Transport Application Programming Interface (T-API) this fall. The demonstration will feature a global assortment of carriers as well as several technology vendors.

The demonstration is part of the OIF's work to accelerate the adoption of open SDN (see "OIF looks to solidify Transport SDN APIs"). The T-API is designed help address problems that may arise as carriers use SDN and network virtualization to deal with peak traffic events, link failures, and network slicing.

"In the modern operating environment, carriers need to dynamically move capacity to handle quickly changing traffic demands," said Jonathan Sadler of Coriant and the OIF's technical committee vice chair and acting networking interoperability chair. "The APIs that are being tested create a new breed of applications. Like so many of the interoperability agreements developed by the OIF, demand from carriers continues to drive the technical direction of the Forum."

Host carriers for the demonstration will include China Telecom, China Unicom, SK Telecom, Telefónica, and Verizon. Orange and TELUS will participate as "consulting carriers." Participating vendors will include ADVA Optical Networking, Ciena, Coriant, Fiberhome, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Juniper Networks, NEC Corporation, Sedona Systems, SM Optics and ZTE. Academic and/or research institution participants will include China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR) and Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC).

The OIF says a main focus of the demonstration will be the notification interface that alerts applications that congestion is being observed; traffic movement and addition of capacity should be the results. The OIF and ONF expect other use cases based on the API standards will be clarified during the testing as well and subsequently defined via OIF implementation agreements.

The collaborators say to expect regional demonstration read-out events in early 2017 and a publicly available whitepaper describing the event. More information can be found at http://www.oiforum.com/meetings-and-events/2016-oif-sdn-t-api-demo/.

The OIF and ONF have collaborated to advance the application of SDN to fiber-optic networks in the past. For example, the two organizations held a demonstration of transport SDN in the fall of 2014 (see "OIF and ONF enjoy joint Transport SDN demonstration success").

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