OPNFV releases Brahmaputra to take NFV to the next level

The Linux Foundation-inspired OPNFV Project has taken a new step closer to its ideal of network liberalisation with a new release of its software, reports BCN.

Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), the telecoms industry’s answer to the Stock Market’s Big Bang, aims to open the market for creating software that runs the multitude of functions within any network. The OPNFV Project aims to create a carrier-grade, integrated, open source platform that uses NFV to create telecoms networks that are infinitely more flexible and adaptable than the traditional proprietary systems that locked the software within the rigid backbone of telecoms hardware.

The Project has announced the availability of new improved version of its original offering, code-named Arno, which Telecoms.com reported on in June 2015. The new release, Brahmaputra, offers a more comprehensive standard of tools for testing NFV functionality and use cases. Brahmaputra is OPNFV’s first full experience with a massively parallel simultaneous release process and helps developers to collaborate with upstream communities. By encouraging group collaboration on feature development and addressing multiple technology components across the ecosystem, the Project aims to improve the stability, performance and automation of the system, and to consolidate its features.

The extent of collaboration is ambitious, since OPNFV aims to bring together at least 165 developers from network operators, solution providers and vendors. The focus of their joint efforts will be on integration, deployment and the testing of upstream components to meet NFV’s needs. During the integration process to create the Brahmaputra release, code was contributed by programme writers in the OpenStack, OpenDaylight, OpenContrail ONOS and ETSI developer communities. Meanwhile, there were 30 different projects accepted which created new powers, specifications and community resources to the system.

Among the improvements are Layer 3 VPN instantiation and configuration, initial support for IPv6 deployment and testing in IPv6 environments, better fault detection and recovery, performance boosts through data plane acceleration and much fuller infrastructure testing.

“The strength of any open source project depends on the community developing it,” said OPNFV director Heather Kirksey, “with an entire industry involved in the development of NFV, we’re seeing more collaboration and the strides we made in Brahmaputra create a framework for even more developers to come together.”