Achieve up to 5X lower TCO for SDN and NFV applications with hardware-based acceleration of virtual switch processing.
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DemoFriday with Netronome & Ericsson: Improve Performance & Flexibility of Telco NFV with Intelligent Server Adapters
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GNS3 DemoFriday + Win Free Course: Test Drive SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor in Risk-Free Virtual Environment
Learn how to set up and configure a virtual network for testing and optimizing network performance monitoring software.
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JFrog Develops X-Ray Vision for Containers
Xray was the star of jFrog's annual user conference.
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Netronome Integrates P4 and C Programming on Production Server NICs
Netronome introduced a P4 and C compliant Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for dynamically programming new networking capabilities on its Agilio CX and LX family of intelligent server adapters (ISAs).
The news is significant because bringing SDN capabilities into a server NIC could help identify and resolve tenant application performance bottlenecks rapidly, enabling cloud service providers to maintain high levels of user experience.
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For telco NFV deployments, Netronome said its solution enables a significantly higher degree of dynamic data center traffic observability, helping telco operators to pinpoint issues related to call drops or poor call and video quality in 4G and 5G networks. AT&T and Netronome are presenting and demonstrating this use case at the P4 Language Consortium workshop this week at Stanford University.
The P4 Language Consortium, of which Netronome is an active member, is currently developing specifications for the P4 programming language and associated compilers.The Netronome IDE leverages the Consortium’s open source P4 compiler to deliver 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps performance for popular data center networking functions using the Agilio server networking platform. Extensions developed by Netronome also enable integration with optional C-based programming for sophisticated functions such as stateful processing.
“Server-based networking has evolved as the most widely deployed form of SDN; its fundamental tenets are feature velocity and control - important requirements for data center operators,” said Sujal Das, senior vice president and general manager, marketing and corporate strategy. “As a pioneer in hardware-accelerated, server-based networking solutions, we take great pride in being the first in the industry with shipping products that can truly help customers realize the value of integrated P4 and C programming for their data center applications.”
A beta release of the Netronome IDE with Programmer Studio v6.0 featuring P4 and C programming on Agilio CX and LX ISAs is available.
http://www.netronome.com
http://www.open-nfp.org
http://www.p4.org
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The news is significant because bringing SDN capabilities into a server NIC could help identify and resolve tenant application performance bottlenecks rapidly, enabling cloud service providers to maintain high levels of user experience.
For telco NFV deployments, Netronome said its solution enables a significantly higher degree of dynamic data center traffic observability, helping telco operators to pinpoint issues related to call drops or poor call and video quality in 4G and 5G networks. AT&T and Netronome are presenting and demonstrating this use case at the P4 Language Consortium workshop this week at Stanford University.
The P4 Language Consortium, of which Netronome is an active member, is currently developing specifications for the P4 programming language and associated compilers.The Netronome IDE leverages the Consortium’s open source P4 compiler to deliver 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps performance for popular data center networking functions using the Agilio server networking platform. Extensions developed by Netronome also enable integration with optional C-based programming for sophisticated functions such as stateful processing.
“Server-based networking has evolved as the most widely deployed form of SDN; its fundamental tenets are feature velocity and control - important requirements for data center operators,” said Sujal Das, senior vice president and general manager, marketing and corporate strategy. “As a pioneer in hardware-accelerated, server-based networking solutions, we take great pride in being the first in the industry with shipping products that can truly help customers realize the value of integrated P4 and C programming for their data center applications.”
A beta release of the Netronome IDE with Programmer Studio v6.0 featuring P4 and C programming on Agilio CX and LX ISAs is available.
http://www.netronome.com
http://www.open-nfp.org
http://www.p4.org
Netronome Brings Hardware-Acceleration to OpenStack Networking
Netronome has tuned its Agilio Server Networking Platform for delivering hardware-acceleration for OpenStack networking, allowing data centers to accelerate applications such as network virtualization, security, load balancing and telemetry using different data plane options suitable for use cases spanning traditional IT to IaaS and Telco NFV workloads. Netronome's own testing has found a 5X boost in VM performance when network functions are offloaded to its Agilio interface cards.
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At this week's OpenStack Summit in Austin, Netronome, in collaboration with Ericsson and Mirantis, is showcasing acceleration of open source datapath implementations, specifically, Open vSwitch (OVS), Stateful Firewall (Connection Tracking) and OpenContrail vRouter using Agilio CX intelligent server adapters. The company said this approach will be incorporated as an enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture specification. As a result, critical networking functions that would otherwise hamper performance of the OpenStack implementation are offloaded to the Agilio platform, accommodating significantly more virtual machines per server leading to up to 6X lower TCO and higher services revenue per server compared to traditional NICs.
http://www.netronome.com
At this week's OpenStack Summit in Austin, Netronome, in collaboration with Ericsson and Mirantis, is showcasing acceleration of open source datapath implementations, specifically, Open vSwitch (OVS), Stateful Firewall (Connection Tracking) and OpenContrail vRouter using Agilio CX intelligent server adapters. The company said this approach will be incorporated as an enhanced OpenStack networking plug-in architecture specification. As a result, critical networking functions that would otherwise hamper performance of the OpenStack implementation are offloaded to the Agilio platform, accommodating significantly more virtual machines per server leading to up to 6X lower TCO and higher services revenue per server compared to traditional NICs.
http://www.netronome.com
Netronome's Agilio Server Networking Accelerates Cloud Data Centers
Netronome introduced its Agilio Server Networking Platform for transparently offloading server-based networking data paths, such as open virtual switch (OVS), Juniper Networks Contrail vRouter, and Linux firewall.
The company said its hardware and software-based Agilio platform delivers up to 5X higher throughput while reducing CPU requirements by up to 80 percent compared to traditional NICs and server-based networking implemented in software.
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Server-based networking is being widely deployed in cloud data centers to handle virtualization, firewalls, load balancing, telemetry, zero-trust security using micro-segmentation, virtual network functions (VNFs) and application-based analytics. The big cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google) are using server-based networking in their mega data centers. Netronome's Agilio solution accelerates such server-based networking functions by offloading compute-intensive flow and tunnel processing from the CPUs.
The Agilio CX intelligent server adapters (ISAs) are based on Netronome's own flow processing silicon (NFP-4000) and software architecture (Agilio Software). The Agilio ISAs use onboard memory to support up to two million security policies, and deliver 28Mpps of throughput using hardware-based acceleration.
The company said its hardware and software-based Agilio platform delivers up to 5X higher throughput while reducing CPU requirements by up to 80 percent compared to traditional NICs and server-based networking implemented in software.
Server-based networking is being widely deployed in cloud data centers to handle virtualization, firewalls, load balancing, telemetry, zero-trust security using micro-segmentation, virtual network functions (VNFs) and application-based analytics. The big cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google) are using server-based networking in their mega data centers. Netronome's Agilio solution accelerates such server-based networking functions by offloading compute-intensive flow and tunnel processing from the CPUs.
The Agilio CX intelligent server adapters (ISAs) are based on Netronome's own flow processing silicon (NFP-4000) and software architecture (Agilio Software). The Agilio ISAs use onboard memory to support up to two million security policies, and deliver 28Mpps of throughput using hardware-based acceleration.
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Spirent Introduces New Application-Powered SaaS Platform to Grade Cloud Infrastructures
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#cloudtesting--Spirent Communications Plc (LSE: SPT), an industry leader in test and measurement, announced today a new platform that allows companies to manage all their testing needs from anywhere, using any device. Spirent Temeva, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for network and cloud testing, initially offers three web-based applications covering everything from network traffic testing and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure benchmarking to cloud
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Spirent Introduces New Application-Powered SaaS Platform to Grade Cloud Infrastructures
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#cloudtesting--Spirent Communications Plc (LSE: SPT), an industry leader in test and measurement, announced today a new platform that allows companies to manage all their testing needs from anywhere, using any device. Spirent Temeva, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for network and cloud testing, initially offers three web-based applications covering everything from network traffic testing and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) infrastructure benchmarking to cloud
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Ciena’s Blue Planet Gets DevOps Toolkit
In the world of SDN and NFV, Ciena today revealed a new addition to its Blue Planet network and service orchestration platform. They have added a DevOps Toolkit to the mix, hoping to enable the developers at their ecosystem partners to create and on-board new VNFs and other pieces of the puzzle rather than do it all themselves. ... [visit site to read more]
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Beyond Microsegmentation – SDN, Security Policy Automation & Monitoring. Sign Up Now!
Learn how SDN principles can be brought to bear on security devices to minimize operational complexity, errors, and time-to-deploy.
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Citrix Joins the Docker Container Crowd With NetScaler CPX
Putting load balancing capabilities directly into the developer's hands.
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Blue Planet Goes With a DevOps Approach
A new toolkit allows in-house customization of Blue Planet.
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Security Startup vArmour Raises a $41M Series D
A lot more money for microsegmentation.
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Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project Gets Organized
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which was kicked off by Facebook earlier this year with a mission to take the principles of the Open Compute Project (OCP) model and apply them to software systems and components involved in access, backhaul, and core networks, has expanded its membership and formed the first set of technical project groups.
New TIP members include Axiata Digital, Indosat, MTN Group, Telefonica, Vodafone, Acacia, ADVA, BlueStream, Broadcom, Coriant, Deloitte, Juniper Networks, and Lumentum. TIP launch partners included Intel, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom.
The new Project Groups include:
Access
System integration and site optimization – Chaired by SK Telecom
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New integration via innovative, cost-effective and efficient end-to-end solutions that address rural and urban regions difficult to serve profitably.
Unbundled solutions – Co-chaired by SK Telecom and Nokia
Taking a fresh look at access, specifically through a cost-effective approach for low-power, low-maintenance solutions.
Media-friendly solutions – Chaired by Intel
Focusing on methods to increase effective throughput and further enhance the mobile user experience by bringing compute and storage capacity closer to the network edge.
Backhaul
High-frequency autonomic access – Chaired by Facebook
Defining thin and extensible software stack to autonomously coordinate routing, addressing and security related functions in packet-switched IPv6 networks.
Open optical packet transport – Co-chaired by Facebook and Equinix
Defining Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) open packet transport architecture that triggers new pace of technology innovation and flexibility, and avoids implementation lock-ins.
Core and Management
Core network optimization – Chaired by Intel
New innovation through disaggregation of traditional telecom core network via deconstructing traditionally bundled components.
Greenfield telecom networks – Co-chaired by Nokia, Facebook and Deutsche Telekom
Accelerating operator-friendly evolution towards a pure and efficient IT-based network architecture via greenfield solutions designed from the ground up.
https://telecominfraproject.com/news/updates-to-the-tip-foundation/
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New TIP members include Axiata Digital, Indosat, MTN Group, Telefonica, Vodafone, Acacia, ADVA, BlueStream, Broadcom, Coriant, Deloitte, Juniper Networks, and Lumentum. TIP launch partners included Intel, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom.
The new Project Groups include:
Access
System integration and site optimization – Chaired by SK Telecom
New integration via innovative, cost-effective and efficient end-to-end solutions that address rural and urban regions difficult to serve profitably.Unbundled solutions – Co-chaired by SK Telecom and Nokia
Taking a fresh look at access, specifically through a cost-effective approach for low-power, low-maintenance solutions.
Media-friendly solutions – Chaired by Intel
Focusing on methods to increase effective throughput and further enhance the mobile user experience by bringing compute and storage capacity closer to the network edge.
Backhaul
High-frequency autonomic access – Chaired by Facebook
Defining thin and extensible software stack to autonomously coordinate routing, addressing and security related functions in packet-switched IPv6 networks.
Open optical packet transport – Co-chaired by Facebook and Equinix
Defining Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) open packet transport architecture that triggers new pace of technology innovation and flexibility, and avoids implementation lock-ins.
Core and Management
Core network optimization – Chaired by Intel
New innovation through disaggregation of traditional telecom core network via deconstructing traditionally bundled components.
Greenfield telecom networks – Co-chaired by Nokia, Facebook and Deutsche Telekom
Accelerating operator-friendly evolution towards a pure and efficient IT-based network architecture via greenfield solutions designed from the ground up.
https://telecominfraproject.com/news/updates-to-the-tip-foundation/
Facebook's Terragraph Accelerates WiGig for City Access
Facebook took the wraps off of two terrestrial connectivity technologies for fast wireless access.
Terragraph is a 60 GHz, multi-node wireless system for dense urban areas and that uses radios based on the WiGig standard. Facebook said Terragraph will deliver gigabits of data capacity. IPv6-only Terragraph nodes will be placed at 200m intervals. Terragraph will incorporate commercial off-the-shelf components and aim for high-volume, low-cost production. Facebook noted that up to 7 GHz of bandwidth is available in the unlicensed 60 GHz band in many countries. U.S. regulators are considering expanding this to a total of 14 GHz.
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Facebook Terragraph will also leverage an SDN-like cloud compute controller and a new modular routing protocol that Facebook optimized for fast route convergence and failure detection. The architecture also tweaks the MAC layer to solve shortcomings of TCP/IP over a wireless link. The company says the TDMA-TDD MAC layers delivers up to 6x improvement in network efficiency while being more predictable than the existing Wi-Fi/WiGig standard.
Terragraph is already in operation at the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, California, where it delivers 1.05 Gbps bidirectional (2.1 Gbps total throughput per distribution node) in P2P mode, up to 250 meters away. A wider trial is planned for San Jose, California.
Facebook also released details on Project ARIES, a transmission technology that is a) spectrally efficient and allows for higher throughput in even the smallest bandwidths, and b) energy efficient, allowing for extended coverage range.
The proof-of-concept system features a base station with 96 antennas and can support 24 streams simultaneously over the same radio spectrum. Researchers have demonstrated 71 bps/Hz of spectral efficiency. The target is aiming for an unprecedented 100+ bps/Hz of spectral efficiency. Facebook said ARIES is an embodiment of Massive MIMO — by using “spatial multiplexing,” the antenna array at the base station can serve a multiplicity of autonomous user terminals on the same time-frequency resource. This opens up possibilities such as resource sharing as an alternative not only to the need for spectrum licensing.
Facebook already has an ARIES testbed delivering 10x spectral and energy efficiency gains in point to multi-point deployments.
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1072680049445290/
Terragraph is a 60 GHz, multi-node wireless system for dense urban areas and that uses radios based on the WiGig standard. Facebook said Terragraph will deliver gigabits of data capacity. IPv6-only Terragraph nodes will be placed at 200m intervals. Terragraph will incorporate commercial off-the-shelf components and aim for high-volume, low-cost production. Facebook noted that up to 7 GHz of bandwidth is available in the unlicensed 60 GHz band in many countries. U.S. regulators are considering expanding this to a total of 14 GHz.
Facebook Terragraph will also leverage an SDN-like cloud compute controller and a new modular routing protocol that Facebook optimized for fast route convergence and failure detection. The architecture also tweaks the MAC layer to solve shortcomings of TCP/IP over a wireless link. The company says the TDMA-TDD MAC layers delivers up to 6x improvement in network efficiency while being more predictable than the existing Wi-Fi/WiGig standard.
Terragraph is already in operation at the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, California, where it delivers 1.05 Gbps bidirectional (2.1 Gbps total throughput per distribution node) in P2P mode, up to 250 meters away. A wider trial is planned for San Jose, California.
Facebook also released details on Project ARIES, a transmission technology that is a) spectrally efficient and allows for higher throughput in even the smallest bandwidths, and b) energy efficient, allowing for extended coverage range.
The proof-of-concept system features a base station with 96 antennas and can support 24 streams simultaneously over the same radio spectrum. Researchers have demonstrated 71 bps/Hz of spectral efficiency. The target is aiming for an unprecedented 100+ bps/Hz of spectral efficiency. Facebook said ARIES is an embodiment of Massive MIMO — by using “spatial multiplexing,” the antenna array at the base station can serve a multiplicity of autonomous user terminals on the same time-frequency resource. This opens up possibilities such as resource sharing as an alternative not only to the need for spectrum licensing.
Facebook already has an ARIES testbed delivering 10x spectral and energy efficiency gains in point to multi-point deployments.
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1072680049445290/
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HPE Spins Off Its Enterprise Services Business
CSC and ES plan to merge into a $26B behemoth.
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NIA Replacing ‘Old Standards Bodies,’ Says Cisco
Leading industry executives reckon the NIA will play a critical role in facilitating investment in multivendor NFV deployments.
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Physical network infrastructure to decrease in SDN virtual evolution
Ethernet switches, Wi-Fi APs and routers may be the only physical network infrastructure you need in a virtual-, SDN- and cloud-based future, according to networking expert Craig Mathias.
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AppFest 2016. Testing at UNH-IOL
Rick Bauer provides a recap of the recent ONF AppFest at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab in this two part series.
We just returned from the second annual ONF AppFest, sponsored by the ONF Testing & Interoperability Working Group and the ONF Testing Leadership Council. In our next post, we’ll cover a similar event hosted by Beijing Internet Institute (BII) in Beijing—another ONF testing event (too much to cover these days!) The North American event was held at the brand-new University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) in scenic Durham, New Hampshire. Last week, ONF member companies, students, and other participants gathered to test their software against several OpenFlow switch environments, against an assortment of SDN controllers, with a variety of purposes. Some tested for protocol conformance with the OpenFlow 1.3 specification; others tested for functionality against a series of software controllers (ONOS, OpenDaylight, Ryu, etc.); still others wanted insight on ways that they could optimize the performance of their software by utilizing ONF’s set of performance benchmarking tools, currently in development.
Figure 1. UNH-IOL is housed in a beautiful facility bordering the campus, and has three floors of new dormitories as well. Students who work alongside their Computer Science professors don’t have far to walk to get to their jobs at UNH-IOL.
Upon arriving at UNH-IOL, we quickly discovered that the facility might be the best AppFest environment we have ever found! The nearly 50 AppFest attendees had a fantastic event. New participant and ONF member Brain4Net was thoroughly pleased in that they were able to test against various hardware platforms and switches. Alexander Rumyankov, chief product officer at Brain4Net said, “First of all, thanks a lot for such good event organization. I’ve never seen such a well-equipped place, which allowed us to quickly interconnect with other participants and saved a lot of time on use case testing. And we could work and eat at the same time!”
Following on that comment was Spirent’s Ralph Daniels, who praised the setup and facilities as well. He said, “All this table space, lab equipment, connectivity, and they let us eat in the lab.” Apparently, engineers like to eat (and drink coffee) while they work, and the only equipment they would ruin in the chance of a spill would be their own!
UNH-IOL is no stranger to the open computing revolution. They were recognized a few years ago by IEEE in their reception of the coveted IEEE-SA Corporate Award and the lab currently hosts events for the Open Compute Project, ONF, the Open Networking User Group (ONUG), and Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV). Our testing was performed in their spacious 27,000+ square foot facility, which houses a multi-million dollar array of test equipment and the latest devices from UNH-IOL member companies, including scores of ONF member companies.
Figure 2. Ralph Daniels and Ed Rank from Spirent, were busy last week with validating systems, providing traffic generating, and supporting all of the companies at the AppFest at UNH-IOL.
We were impressed by all the students who were helping out—not just delivering food and coffee, but configuring networks, testing machines, and recording results. More than 100 graduate and undergraduate student employees work with full-time UNH-IOL staff. Like our other ONF-approved SDN Testing Labs, the companies and organizations that work with UNH-IOL benefit from cost-effective testing services, as well as the opportunity to recruit future engineers from the UNH-IOL workforce. We had the fun of meeting former students who are now working for Ixia, Extreme Networks, and other SDN companies, playing the role of engineers at the AppFest.
The last formal day of the AppFest, we had what we call “Community Day”, and it was a great time. For several hours, we learned about new projects and we watched demos from some of the OpenSourceSDN.org open source software projects. The Castor Project was presented live from Australia, and led onsite by NoviFlow’s Marc LeClerc, one of the participants. Kudo’s to Vijay Sivaraman of the University of New South Wales in Australia and Craig Russell of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) for staying up way past midnight for their demo. Next we had the pleasure to host Arpit Gupta from Princeton, the project lead for the iSDX project, which is gaining traction and visibility. Already they are working with several operators and Internet exchanges around the world, and the demo was excellent.
After we had a brief review of how ONF’s open source efforts were progressing, we closed with a very compelling demo by China Mobile’s Robert Chen, who did a great job introducing a new project from a data center use case they are working on. Robert walked through a new orchestration and deployment engine, fully SDN, that allowed provisioning and management from a GUI that was intuitive and well within the reach of the average network engineer. He dragged and dropped nodes, switches, gateways, load balancers – all picked from pull-down menus featuring both hardware and software-based switches and other equipment and tools. It was as if we did not have to build a car piece-by-piece in order to drive to the store. It was encouraging to see a vision of SDN that looked far more user-friendly than I’ve seen.
We’re putting together some videos of the event which will be available on our website here. The videos include:
- Facility Walk-Around with Dan Pitt and UNH-IOL’s Director Erica Johnson
- Castor Demo Presentation
- iSDX Demo Presentation
- China Mobile Demo Presentation
- OpenSourceSDN.org Project Report
With the second annual AppFest in the books, you would think we would be tired. Not us! We are already planning the next one – stay tuned for details on the date and location. Thank you to all the people who participated and made the week a successful one. Check back in with us for part 2 of the AppFest blog post. We look forward to seeing all of our members and open source community contributors at next year’s AppFest!
- Rick Bauer, Director of Technology Programs
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Last Chance! HPE DemoFriday – Automate & Cut Deployment Time for New Services
Radically simplify service creation & provisioning with a network-wide automation & orchestration platform
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Brocade Automates Data Centers With Workflow Composer
It uses technology from StackStorm.
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Securing the Cloud With SDN
An in depth analysis of the implications of increased threats for network virtualization, cloud & security.
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SD-WAN Startup Viptela Raises $75M
Cashing in on big names like Verizon and Singtel.
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