By Ranny Haiby, CTO, Networking, Edge & Access, the Linux Foundation
Evolving together, while remaining independent
For over a decade, open source projects within LF Networking have fostered close collaborations with Standards Development Organizations (SDOs). These synergistic relationships have proven invaluable. To gain insight into the mechanics and benefits of this collaboration, we invite you to view the insightful panel discussion from the recent Open Networking & Edge Summit, where industry experts elaborated on the mutually advantageous outcomes.
A testament to this ongoing partnership is the recent publication of a whitepaper by the ETSI NFV workgroup, titled “NFV Evolution Towards the Telco Cloud.” This document, which aligns closely with the core themes of LF Networking’s open source projects, is essential reading for anyone involved in the design, construction, and operation of contemporary networks. It offers a valuable perspective on cutting-edge technology trends and their practical application, irrespective of adherence to ETSI NFV specifications. This post will further explore how open source networking projects provide tangible implementations of the concepts outlined in this whitepaper.
From principles to deployment
The whitepaper defines certain principles for the evolved networks. Similar principles have been serving as the foundation for creating several OSS projects under the LFN. The Nephio project was created with the mission statement of simplifying the task of network automation, reducing the amount of different tools required, and unifying the way the infrastructure and network functions are managed. This addresses principle #1 in the whitepaper that calls for “…simplifying the integration and operation of all necessary parts”. Nephio also addresses many of the Cloud-Nativeness aspects of principle #2, especially the need to “…bridge the technology gap that telecom network operators face to integrate more DevOps, CI/CD, GitOps and automated management features into their networks.” It does so by relying on concepts built around GitOps and providing tools to the network operators to use them in their network. Another main tenet of Nephio is declarative orchestration, which allows for efficient Multi-cloud Infrastructure and Multi-vendor Network Function Configuration Management. This sits well with principle #2 of the whitepaper that states that “Declarative management approaches contribute to more automated deployment and operation, and potentially replace or complement the imperative management mode of networks, where appropriate.”.
Other LFN communities like ONAP have been providing implementations for network automation for a while now. ONAP is evolving into a set of standalone automation building blocks that can be used to carry out various aspects of network automation. The concepts of control loops and policy driven orchestration, as implemented by the ONAP modules, address principle #5 of enhanced automation. Those modules perform the tasks described in the whitepaper as “…swiftly adjust resource configuration based on network requirements to meet new service demands, monitor the network status in real-time, issue early warnings, detect and address potential network faults promptly, and ensure stable network operation.” Over the years the ONAP project successfully implemented many of the interfaces defined by ETSI-NFV for the Management and Orchestration (MANO) layer, including SOL003 and SOL005.
Principle #3 in the whitepaper calls for “software portability across infrastructure”. The LFN Cloud Native Telco initiative (CNTi) project has been focused on addressing this challenge. The open source community identified the need to provide best practices and test tools for network function developers and deployers. The best practices guide developers in their journey to transform network functions to cloud native portable applications. The test tools provide a quantitative method to assess cloud-nativeness and portability.
Other projects like Sylva help operators apply principle #6 – flexibility, modularization, and scalability. Sylva provides all the components required for “…building telecom networks in a more flexible and efficient way: the management and orchestration elements, together with a unified end-to-end cloud infrastructure”. Another goal of Sylva is creating harmonized infrastructure across all operators’ Telco cloud infrastructures, contributing further to the portability principle.
The new approach to Telco Cloud
The whitepaper discusses the need to evolve the technology aspects as well as the frameworks of management and orchestration. The projects mentioned above provide many of the elements of that evolution. The architecture proposed in the whitepaper describes several layers of technologies that are highly aligned with the open source networking projects hosted by the LF.
Telco Cloud Infrastructure
Projects like Sylva and Anuket provide architecture, specifications and reference implementations for the Telco Cloud. Developing this architecture under open source software projects ensures neutrality of the solution and avoids the dreaded vendor lock-in that prevailed in telco infrastructure for many years.
Platform Services
With the recent modularization of the ONAP project, operators may now easily choose the modules that best serve their needs and integrate with their existing environment. The ONAP project produces mature modules that were developed by industry experts, deployed in production networks and are constantly improved.
Application Orchestration Services
Nephio provides all the functionality required to orchestrate network functions as “applications” not “appliances”. With concepts of declarative configuration and intent based automation it simplifies the management and allows network operators to tap into the potential of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem and benefit from the full functionality of Kubernetes and the other cloud native projects. Nephio is built around the approach of constant reconciliation of desired and actual state of the network, implementing the concept of “…providing network-level and diverse application reconciliation between the intents of network orchestration and management and the individual management actions towards the Telco Cloud Platform Services and the Telco Cloud Infrastructure for end-to-end automated network operation.”
Conclusion
If you have been involved in Telecommunications standardization and/or open source development in the last decade it comes as no surprise that this ETSI-NFV whitepaper is highly aligned with the activities of the various networking projects under the Linux Foundation. If you are new to this domain and would like to understand more about open source projects and how they may be used together to provide solutions, you are welcome to take a look at our recent whitepaper on the roles of the various open source networking projects.
The work of evolving the open source projects to address the needs of modern networks is never done. You are encouraged to take a closer look at our open source projects and start getting involved by being part of the discussions on communication channels and by making technical contributions to the projects. Remember – contributions are not just lines of code. They could come in the form of documentation, additional feature and use case definitions, to name just a few.
