The ONAP Project continues to redefine the landscape of network automation, evolving from a monolithic platform to a modular collection of advanced network automation functions. This year’s 2024 LF Networking Annual Report highlights ONAP’s groundbreaking advancements, recent releases, and ambitious plans for the future.
This update is brought to you by Pawel Pawlak, Chair of ONAP TSC & SECCOM, and Product Manager at Incognito Software Systems, offering insights into ONAP’s journey and future direction.
ONAP Project Update
The ONAP, as a collection of Network Automation functions, offers advanced and individual network automation capabilities. It focuses on component selection, AI-assisted network orchestration, natural language processing, communication and infrastructure security, modernization, and adherence to industry standards.
ONAP is no longer a platform; instead, it provides various individual network automation functions and security reference configurations by leveraging Service Mesh, Ingress and Gateway, OIDC IAM. It supports the development of individual ONAP functions and component deployment through CI/CD under the ONAP Streamlining evolution.
ONAP will evolve to become more intent-based and declarative, integrate greater use of Generative AI, and support a secure software supply chain.
Key Developments in 2024
- Security Enhancements:
- ONAP projects have addressed critical security concerns by converting ports to HTTPS, removing hard-coded passwords, enabling Kubernetes pods to operate with non-root privileges, and mitigating Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). These measures have significantly bolstered the platform’s security. Additionally, by leveraging industry-standard/de facto security security protocol and mechanisms such as Istio Service Mesh and Ingress Gateway, ONAP ensures secure inter- and intra-component communications.
- Platform Modernization:
- Components such as the Common Controller Software Development Kit (CCSDK), Configuration Persistence Service (CPS), Usecase User Interface (UUI), Portal-NG and Policy Framework were upgraded to Java 17. Additionally, various software versions updates ensure that ONAP leverages the latest software development frameworks.
- ONAP Streamlining Evolution:
- This initiative makes ONAP components modular and independent through interface abstraction,loose coupling and CI/CD. As a result, ONAP has evolved into a collection of individual network orchestration functions, allowing the industry to pick and choose specific components and enabling flexible and dynamic function adoption.
- Intent-Based Declarative and GenAI Solutions:
- Supports generative AI solutions powered by large language models (LLMs), and includes data service enhancements (domain-specific datasets) of Intent-driven networks.
- Industry Standards Upgrade:
- CCSDK/SDNC now supports an RFC8040-compliant network interface.
- OpenSSF Gold Standard Achievement:
- The CPS and Policy Framework projects have achieved the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Gold Badging standard, demonstrating ONAP’s commitment to high-quality, secure, and reliable open source software development.
Recent Releases
Montreal Release: The Montreal release introduced several enhancements:
- Streamlining-Based Release Plan: The ONAP release process has been simplified and made more agile by including only Start, RC, and Sign Off stages, without fixed milestones. PTLs and communities can incorporate multiple agile deployment cycles as needed within the release.
- Modeling Improvements: Automated tools for YANG modules have been introduced to enhance development efficiency and improve version control.
- Operations Manager (OOM) Updates: Added support for Gateway-API in Ingress templates and integrated with the MariaDB operator, ensuring ONAP MariaDB instances are created with the latest version by default.
- Service Design and Creation (SDC) Enhancements: Added capabilities for service updates directly in YAML, comprehensive support for defining interface operations, and adaptability in defining CSAR structure to meet individual model requirements.
- For other key updates, see here.
NewDelhi Release: The most recent ONAP release, NewDelhi, introduced several enhancements:
- Key Updates, please see here.
- Leveraging Industry De Facto Technologies: Replaced ONAP-specific component communication mechanisms, such as MSB and DMaaP with Strimzi/Kafka.
- Security enhancements: Improved security using Istio Ingress, Istio Service Mesh and Keycloak-based authentication and authorization. Added support for Gateway-API in Ingress templates and integrated with the MariaDB operator, ensuring ONAP MariaDB instances are created with the latest version by default.
- GenAI Solutions: Supports generative AI (GenAI) solutions powered by LLMs, and Data Service (domain-specific tuning) enhancements for intent-driven networks.
- Infrastructure enhancements: Updated Kubernetes, Istio, Keycloak, Strimiz-Kafka, K8ssandra-operator and Mariadb-operator.Looking Ahead to 2025
Oslo Release: The Oslo release introduced several enhancements:
- Key Updates, please see here.
- OpenSSF Gold badging status: Both CPS and Policy Framework have achieved the highest OpenSSF Gold badging status!
- Lightweight ONAP: Developed use cases and PoC for compositing selected individual ONAP components to create higher-level solutions, such as intent-driven network automation.
- ONAP Streamlining Evolution: Continued the component individual build and deployment of components using continuous deployment. For example, Deutsche Telekom (DT) completed an Argo-CD based ONAP component deployments as a proof of concept, with this feature set to be officially available in the Paris release.
- Leverage Industry De Facto Technologies: Continued replacing ONAP-specific infrastructure and communication mechanisms with industry-standard / de facto solutions, such as Strimzi/Kafka, Realm client authorization, Oauth2-proxy.
- Infrastructure enhancements: Continued updating Kubernetes, Istio, Keycloak, Strimiz-Kafka, K8ssandraoperator and Mariadb-operator
- Production-quality ONAP Deployment Readiness: Enhanced OOM scripts and other components to achieve production-quality deployment readiness, as demonstrated in Deutsche Telekom’s TNAP environment.
Looking Ahead to 2025:
ONAP plans to continue its trajectory of innovation and improvement in 2025, focusing on:
- Cloud-Native Transformation: Building upon previous releases, ONAP aims to further enhance its cloudnative capabilities, facilitating seamless integration and deployment within modern cloud environments.
- • Modularity and Flexibility: The project intends to increase the modularity of its platform, allowing users to select and deploy specific components tailored to their unique use cases, thereby improving flexibility and scalability.
- Standardization and Compliance: ONAP is committed to aligning more closely with industry standards, including those set by 3GPP and O-RAN, to ensure interoperability and compliance across diverse network environments.
To achieve these capabilities and ensure compliance, ONAP TSC has set the following goals for 2025:
- Ensure ONAP core components are focused and operate independently, from build to runtime
- Make ONAP core components more autonomous and ready for use by both ONAP, LF and other external users
- Incorporate more GenAI capabilities and use cases into the ONAP components, and promote the adoption of open-source LLM models and frameworks aligned with LF AI & Data and GenAI Commons
- Foster inter-community collaboration with other LF communities, such as O-RAN and Nephio
- Ensure the security of ONAP components and operations
- Define a secure LFN CI/CD pipeline by leveraging OpenSSF-associated reference tools
These strategic initiatives position ONAP to remain at the forefront of network automation solutions, delivering enhanced value to its users and stakeholders in the evolving technological landscape.
Read the Full 2024 LF Networking Annual Report
This ONAP update is just one part of the exciting developments highlighted in the 2024 LF Networking Annual Report. Discover more about ONAP and other transformative projects driving open networking innovation. Read the full report here.
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