New IP Agency Plans Test for NFV Interoperability

Interoperability for Management and Orchestration (MANO) in the NFV space will be thoroughly tested at Light Reading’s third annual Big Communications Event (BCE) in Austin, Texas next month.

The initiative, which has been developed by the New IP Agency (NIA) and will be conducted in partnership with the European Advanced Network Test Center (EANTC), an independent test center based in Berlin, Germany, will culminate in a live showcase as well as published matrix of interoperable NFV orchestration, virtualized network functions (VNFs) and NFV infrastructure combinations.

“In NFV, interoperability of Management and Network Orchestration (MANO) with infrastructure (NFVI) and services (VNFs) is a key milestone to enable multi-vendor solutions, enabling service providers to mix and match virtualized components best suited for their individual requirements,” said Carsten Rossenhoevel, MD of EANTC. “Our tests cover management of service chains, scaling scenarios and resource management.  Only these functions, enabled by correct MANO, NFVI and VNF interaction, enable the full agility and flexibility service providers expect from NFV.”

An on-site hot staging will be conducted at the EANTC lab in Berlin to prove-out desired test combinations prior to shipping the equipment to Austin, Texas for the Big Communications Event.

The interoperable MANO-VIM-VNF matrix will detail the exact combinations leading to positive outcomes. NIA will publish sufficient details of hardware, firmware and software versions and configurations, thereby enabling any third party to reproduce the tests if they so desire.  Combinations that do not yield successful outcomes will also be summarized in the report.

Recognizing the need for NFV-related products to work together as a means of further stimulating the market and moving this portion of the industry to a higher level, NIA’s interoperability program has received widespread support from vendors and tier one service providers since the inception of the agency in January of 2016. The mission of the New IP Agency is to provide information, education, analysis, community services and testing to support and accelerate the development of a global economy based on open, advanced, virtualized IP networks.

NIA test results will be delivered to ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group, OpenStack, OPNFV, and similar standards bodies and open source groups for use in the development of additional tests and standards.

The Big Communications Event, which will host the interoperability demonstration, brings together the industry’s top competitive operators with its most dynamic technologists to discuss and debate the issues both driving and challenging the ultimate move to an NFV-enabled cloud running profitable applications and services over an underlying New IP network.

The next interoperability test and showcase is scheduled for September. NIA members will participate in the selection process for technical coverage.

For further information on the MANO test or any forthcoming NIA interoperability initiative, please contact me at [email protected].

Ken Presti is director of the New IP Agency (NIA), which provides information, education, analysis, community services and testing to support and accelerate the development of a global economy based on open, advanced, virtualized IP networks.