Network function virtualization continues to permeate the telecommunications space, with the Broadband Forum hosting a session specially dedicated to NFV and the organization touting continued progress with its previously announced relationship with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.
According to the Broadband Forum, NFV will have its own session at the organization’s quarterly meeting this week in Dublin, Ireland. The session will be the second dedicated to the topic at a Broadband Forum event. The Broadband Forum said discussions will look “on the issues, possibilities and proposals for working on NFV-related projects and how Open Source software may be used.” The Broadband Forum said topics are set to include:
—WT-345 migrating to NFV in the context of TR-178 (the current multi-service broadband network).
—SD-340 Introducing NFV into the MSBN.
—SD-313 SDN in broadband networks.
—WT-317 network enhanced residential gateway architecture (partial virtualizing of RG functions).
—WT-328 virtual business gateway.
—SD-326 flexible service chaining.
In addition to the event focus, the Broadband Forum also said it was continuing to work with ETSI’s Industry Specification Group for NFV following an initial agreement signed last year. The agreement was designed to allow for collaboration “to achieve a consistent approach and common architecture for the infrastructure needed to support virtualized network functions.” The Broadband Forum added that new software-based technologies will need to co-exist with current, multivendor deployments, ensuring interoperability is seen as a key requirement for the adoption of NFV.
“The pace of development in NFV has been astonishing so, by supporting and working together with ETSI’s NFV ISG, which is at the heart of NFV developments, we can continue to develop further guidance and detailed specifications for the industry,” said Robin Mersh, CEO of the Broadband Forum.
ETSI recently announced plans to focus on “phase two” of its NFV initiative, releasing nine NFV-related draft documents for public comment as well as announcing new leadership of its initiative. ETSI said the documents “describe an infrastructure overview, the virtualized network functions architecture and the compute, hypervisor and infrastructure network domains. They also cover management and orchestration, resiliency, interfaces and abstractions and security.”
“Interoperability is a key objective for network operators,” said CableLab’s Don Clarke, chair of the NFV NOC, in connection with the phase two announcement. “In the next phase we intend to intensify our efforts towards achieving interoperability for NFV, which includes normative work where appropriate, formalized dialogue with other industry and standards organizations including open source communities, and a continued emphasis on encouraging open NFV implementations and proof of concepts.”
ETSI earlier this year announced a strategic partnership with the Open Networking Foundation to further the development of NFV specifications. The organizations noted that the agreement will focus on how software-defined networking can enable forwarding-plane support for some NFV use cases.
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter
