Industry collaboration with the ONF unlocks open-source potential

Industry collaboration with the ONF unlocks open-source potential

By Dr. Francisco Araujo de Carvalho, Broadband Forum Board Member; ONF Broadband Governing Board Member; Head of Disaggregated Network Solutions Strategy, Net Reply 

For the first time this year, a CloudCO demo highlighted the interworking between Broadband Forum and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) to align their architectures to virtualize the access network, enable interoperability and widen the ecosystem. This work has allowed Optical Line Terminals (OLTs) to be integrated using the established VOLTHA™  framework in a CloudCO environment via Broadband Forum specified APIs. This, in turn, extends the addressable market for suppliers supporting this solution, and for operators looking to adopt standardized open-source solutions, plugging a gap in the industry. 

The evolution of CloudCO

As a now mature industry standard, CloudCO gives service providers and vendors confidence that solutions implemented using its architecture, interfaces and standards are going to live, last and facilitate interoperability. This is critical to service providers as they look to migrate from vertical legacy to multi-vendor environments.

For vendor-agnostic suppliers, it is important to be involved and drive the direction of the CloudCO work to ensure it supports service integration. Defining standard interfaces and cooperating to build solutions makes it easier to work with new suppliers and introduce new technologies. The migration from G-PON to XGS-PON is a perfect example of that. Thanks to interoperability, the Management and Control systems, as well as OSS orchestration remains the same. All that needs to change are new supplier(s) or technology to be added that fit into that exact same framework whilst meeting service provider requirements. As an example, migration from G-PON to XGS-PON requires new technology introduction which can be achieved with an existing or a new supplier. But regardless, the existing management and control plane solutions can be reused, avoiding new deployment and associated lead-times.

The CloudCO architecture takes a pure approach, with native interfaces on the devices. When operators transition from brownfield to greenfield deployments, broadband access abstraction solutions, such as OB-BAA, facilitates that migration. However, the rise of open-source has created another de facto community-led software that works on any company’s hardware. This was something that had previously been missing from the overall CloudCO framework, but the latest feasibility demo, at Network X, involved a variety of suppliers to plug that gap.

As someone who sits on both the boards of Broadband Forum and the ONF, I get key insight into the strategy and direction of both sides. And the work both organizations have completed collaboratively brings the two communities together to deliver better value for service providers.

Better together – the ONF and Broadband Forum collaboration

The ONF Open Broadband meeting last summer brought together members from companies across the broadband community, including Adtran, APS Networks, Bell Canada, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Radisys, Reply, Telefonica, TIM, Vodafone, and Zyxel Networks. We focused on four projects and streams, including aligning with the Broadband Forum on providing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for plugging VOLTHA – the disaggregated whitebox PON solution – into the Broadband Forum CloudCO framework.

Not only did we outline the scope of Broadband Forum and its areas of focus and innovation, but we also provided background about our ongoing collaboration together. When ONF completed the SEBA (SDN-Enabled Broadband Access) 2.0 Reference Design (RD) specification and shared its vision, it invited comments from Broadband Forum.

The continued discussions between our organizations led to a joint workshop in late 2021, where we identified areas of common interest. The catalyst for the joint work was a mapping between ONF VOLTHA operations and the CloudCO API, with the standardized APIs able to be downstreamed to ONF VOLTHA+ONOS App implementations. An API-driven data model ensures the API is compatible with the applications that end-users are running. Discussions also progressed around ONF VOLTHA-ready whiteboxes to be integrated into the CloudCO environment to help widen the broadband ecosystem.

Seeding the Northbound adapter with an existing ONF “Sysrepo” plugin provided initial momentum, culminating in the demonstration at Network X. This Northbound adapter provides the translation layer between the VOLTHA Northbound APIs and the Broadband Forum Netconf/YANG-based API, enabling VOLTHA to be integrated into CloudCO deployments. Currently, the adapter implements the retrieval of OLT and ONU information and service activation. Potential next steps include full specification of the adapter interfaces and full device management interface (TR-383 based) integration for automation, zero-touch provisioning and exposure of more complete network information.

Driving these opportunities forward

The formation of the joint tiger team has helped to drive these opportunities forward. The tiger team’s scope covered CloudCO and SEBA Components and Interfaces for both greenfield and brownfield deployment scenarios. This means they can be used for cloud-native, legacy support (BAA) and evolutionary migration to Software Defined Networking Management and Control, addressing the continued growth in demand for disaggregation and whitebox solutions in the industry.

As part of the collaboration, two specific opportunities have been identified to leverage open-source VOLTHA and CloudCO API definitions, including:

• The integration of the VOLTHA and ONOS Apps to the CloudCO Access management plane using TR-413 data models.
• Consolidation of OpenOMCI with Broadband Forum’s vOMCI specification TR-451, for device management.

Together, these have helped address key requirements of WT-477 listed in MR-477. WT-477, soon to be published as Technical Report 477 (TR-477 – ‘Access Node Hardware Disaggregation’) by the SDN/NFV Work Area revolutionizes the architecture of the Access Node to address the changing needs of the industry. Take a look at our most recent blog here.

To watch this year’s CloudCO demo, click here.