SAN JOSE -- The move to software-defined networks passedanother milestone as ADVA Optical Networking (Munich) demonstrated the OpenFlowspecification for the first time on an optically switched network. The demo ispart of Europe's OFELIA project and is now available for use as a test bed forresearchers.
OpenFlow is a specification that emerged from work atStanford to implement network virtualization and control in software. Google,one of the main proponents of the technology, recently revealed its effortsusing OpenFlow on one of its electrically switched production networks.
Software-defined networking aims to simplify theconfiguration and management of large networks. Today's nets use anincreasingly complex set of specialized systems and protocols that requiresignificant expertise to manage, creating difficulties especially infast-growing Web 2.0 data centers.
ADVA's work was a collaboration between a handful of itsengineers and PhD candidates at the University of Essex where the test bed isbased. The team needed to create several extensions to OpenFlow including ahardware abstraction layer for optical nets which currently is not part of thespecification.
"OpenFlow is not yet mature enough nor does it have thefeatures to cope with all the aspects of an optical network," said AchimAutenrieth, a principal engineer at ADVA.
"A lot of OpenFlow comes from Ethernet people who don't knowmuch about the needs of optical networks," said Stephan Rettenberger, vicepresident of global marketing at ADVA.
The demo uses ADVA's FSP 3000 wavelength divisionmultiplexing switch and its RayControl management software. All the OpenFlowwork was handled in software with no changes to hardware.
Engineers will develop a network virtualization app as anext step for the test bed. They also plan to "open up and make visible to theOpenFlow controller more optical functions [such as] realizing signalimpairment-aware routing services," said Autenrieth.
Researchers in Brazil, Europe, Japan, and the US can accessthe OpenFlow island on the OFELIA network through GÉANT, a pan-Europeanbackbone that connects national research nets. The OFELIA project is scheduledto remain live for about a year.
The demo is being shown this week at the European FutureInternet Assembly in Aalborn, Denmark.
If the demo sparks demand, ADVA will develop commercialOpenFlow software for its systems, a project which will take considerably moreeffort than the research demo and has not yet started, Autenrieth said. So far,there is no active work on an optical abstraction layer in the OpenFlowstandards group, he added.
Data centers likely will be the first movers into OpenFlow.Telco networks are more mature and relatively slow to make operational changes,said Rettenberger. Nevertheless SDN is clearly the future for all networks, andOpenFlow is gaining momentum as one route in that direction, he added.
Optical nets "are just entering a phase where with softwarewe can change modulation schemes, and the more flexible and automated the netsbecome, the better," Rettenberger said. "OpenFlow would be an attractive meansto control the optical network, it's not the only tool but the data center guyslove it," he said.
"SDN presents a tremendous opportunity for customers tostreamline and automate network infrastructure and operations," said ChristophGlingener, chief technology officer of ADVA, speaking in a press statement.
"While server and storage virtualization have been widelyadopted, network virtualization is still in its infancy," he said. "SDN closesthis gap by offering programmable network control, better scalability andfaster adaption to virtual machine mobility," he added.
"Together we have built an SDN testbed with packet andwavelength switches under a common OpenFlow control -- something that has neverbeen done before," said Dimitra Simeonidou, head of the High PerformanceNetworks Group and a professor at the University of Essex.
This story was originally posted by EETimes.
