Network “Softwarisation” and Open Collaborative Development_

Diego R. LopezTelefonica I+DMarch 2014

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Sisyphus on Different Hills

Network Service Providers

Equipment Vendors

SDOs

Operator 1

2-6 Years

Demand

Drive

Standardise Implement

Sell

Deploy

Operator 2

Operator n

Critical mass ofsupporters

Develop Deploy Publish

2-6 Months

The NSP Cycle The CAP Cycle

2-6 years

2-6 months

Content and Application Providers

AVAILABLE AVAILABLE

Idea !!

Idea !!

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The Triple Virtuous Gears…

… That need levers to go round

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The Road to a Network IDE

• The natural consequence of applying concepts and tools related to software development

• Supporting a complete design flow• High-level definition and

manipulation• Validation from simulation

to actual debugging• Beta versions by slicing• Phased deployment• Integrate virtualized and

non-virtualized functional elements

• Aligned with parallel IT development

SDN Controller

SDN Forwarder

OVS

OVS OVS

OVS

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Building Network Apps

• Based on the abstraction of a high-level, declarative programming language

• Network administrators specify how they want the network to look, who can talk to whom and how…• High-level declarations and

constraints are translated into low level instructions that each data plane element can implement

• The “hacks that vary by box, by vendor, by version, by deployment…” is the compiler’s problem

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The NetIDE Concept

• NetIDE aims at delivering a single point of entry to SDN development that support the whole development lifecycle of network controller programs in a vendor-independent fashion

• In short:• A controller- and gear-independent approach to support the

development of Network Apps• Integrated development and tool support for the network design

cycle in SDN environments• New network layer services and the support for emulator-in-the-

loop and simulator-in-the-loop configuration

• Open collaboration made possible not only at the deployment level, but since the initial inception and along the whole development phases

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The NetIDE Architecture

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Pulling the Levers

• Open collaboration in SDN/NFV has to go beyond pure open-source integration• And embrace collaborative development

• Bring all potential actors onto a common base for app development• Service providers, infrastructure manufacturers, software

developers, researchers…• From initial inception to actual deployment

• Supporting all the phases: design, development, and deployment• Taking direct advantage of the technology itself

• A bootstrapping process• Setting the ground for

• DevOps applied to network services• An open ecosystem for network apps

• It is the apps, stupid!