spirent sdn and nfv solutions

Accelerating SDN and NFV

Deployments

Malathi Malla

Spirent Communications

Vertically integrated

Closed, proprietary

Slow innovation

Traditional Networks

Protocol flood

Open source communities

App portfolio – video, voice, security

Interoperability

Performance

Across virtual and cloud infrastructure

Infinite Complexity of Testing

SDN and NFV: Throughout the Network

SDN and NFV Timeline

PoCs (Proof-of-Concept testing)

Operators, vendors

learn in the lab

Few field trials

Field trials

Vendors productize

SDN and NFV software in

operator lab trials

A few more field trials

~10 commercial

deployments

2013 2014 2015 2016–2020

Wider-spread

commercial

deployments

Operators deploy several

SDN and NFV use cases;

more each year

Commercial

deployments

~15–20 more

commercial deployments

Many operators deploy

1 or 2 use cases

(contained domains)

Source: IHS (Infonetics Research), 2015

Cloud-based architectures

AT&T Supplier Domain Program 2.0

SDN re-considerations to drive automation

What’s Trending?

Next-Generation Central Offices

(NG-COs) or Cloud COs

Spend shifting to 100GE for undeniable

traffic growth

Software-

Defined

Networking Agility.

Manageability.

Programmability.

New business models and

revenue opportunities

Minimize complexity and

network management

Lower capital and operational

expenses

SDN Architecture

SDN Architecture

Focus areas in the SDN ecosystem

SDN Approaches/Protocols

for Network Programmability

Overlay

Underlay

SDN Deployment with OpenFlow

• Defined by Open Networking

Foundation

• OpenFlow is an open API that

provides a common instruction

set for interacting with packet-

forwarding hardware

• It is a centralized Controller that

separates Data Plane from

Control Plane

• A single Controller interacts with

many switches and allows for

quick, dynamic changes as

network needs evolve

OpenFlow Model

Switch Switch Switch

Data Plane

Control Plane

OF Config Protocol

OF Protocol

Applications

APIs

Spirent and Open Networking Foundation

• ONF member since founding year

• Testing and Leadership Council – member

• Testing and Interoperability Working Group

– Vice Chair Benchmarking Group

– Test Case Contributions

– Conformance Tests and Benchmarking

• AppFest and SDN Solutions Showcase

• Validating OpenFlow networks with Spirent

– OpenFlow Controller Emulation

– OpenFlow Switch Emulation

Validating SDN

• SDN deployments are facing strong headwinds – Too many new moving parts and new protocols

– Dozens of flavors of SDN controllers and switches

• New validation methods

– Need to test functionality and

scale of controllers, switches

and the interactions between

them

– Need to ensure high-availability

and reliability

– Need to interoperate with

legacy environments

Functional testing of SDN components

• What to Test? Test cases Desired outcome /

metrics Device under test Protocols

Protocol functionality and state machine validation

Ensure that southbound protocols comply with standards (IETF, ONF…)

• PCE, OpenFlow Controller

• OpenFlow switches, PCC clients

OpenFlow, Path Computation Element protocol (PCE-P), BGP-LS, Segment Routing

Interoperability in multi-vendor environments

Ensure that network functions from different vendors interoperate in a standards compliant way to provide E2E services

Includes white box equipment, branded vendor equipment and Open source controllers

OpenFlow, Path Computation Element protocol (PCE-P), BGP-LS, Segment Routing

Scale testing of SDN components



Successful programming of hundreds of clients or switches across domains

Ensure that PCE and OF controllers correctly program hundreds of clients/switches, at high scale, in real time

• PCE Controller • OpenFlow Controller

(including ODL, ONOS, etc.)

PCE, OpenFlow, BGP-LS

Successful setup and switching of millions of flows or paths

Ensure that OF switches perform line rate forwarding at high flow table depth

OpenFlow switches OpenFlow

Ensure that ingress routers can establish millions of TE paths with peer PE routers

PCC clients (PE router, vRouter, ASBR)

PCE, RSVP, Segment Routing

QoS / Reliability testing of SDN components



Maintaining of QoS SLAs while forwarding traffic at high scale

Ensure OF switches meter flows as defined by Controller and maintain acceptable packet forwarding latency

OpenFlow switches OpenFlow

Rapid detection of failed paths and switchover without loss of service

Measure time taken by PCE controller to detect failures on primary path and the successful switchover to backup path

PCC clients (PE router, vRouter, ASBR)

PCE, RSVP, Segment Routing, BGP-LS

Network

Functions

Virtualization Elasticity.

Flexibility.

Scalability.

Shorter service delivery cycles

and quicker time-to-value

Greater service agility and

scalability

Lower capital and operational

expenses

Better Infrastructure to Support the

Future of Networking

Validating NFV

Choke Points “How many app instances

can I spin up?”

“Can my network scale across

VXLAN or VLANs?”

“Should I use

SSD or Spinning Disk?”

“Can my VNFs handle

Internet Route Reflection?”

“Do multiple VMs contend for

storage performance?”

“How many flows

can I support?”

“Does my orchestrator

follow policy?”

“What is the service impact

of VM migration?”

Spirent and NFV Thought Leadership

Holistic Testing of Virtual and Cloud

Infrastructure

Performance and Benchmarking

Traffic Sweep Test: Benchmark the Forwarding Plane performance of the

VNF under test


Control Plane: Benchmark the Control Plane scale and performance of

VNF under test


On-demand Scale: End-to-end traffic testing between nodes in a multi-

tenant cloud/datacenter

Management and Orchestration

Functional test and instantiation time

Management and Orchestration

Auto-scale Validation: Successful completion of auto-scaling and the maintenance of customer

SLAs both during and after the completion of auto-scaling

Accelerate…

SDN and NFV

deployments

Scale up...

Infrastructure

Performance

Reliability

Be confident...

Virtualized

Network

Security

Realize more...

Continuous Testing

for DevOps

Spirent’s Turn Key Solutions

Accelerating SDN and NFV Deployments

spirent.com/Solutions/SDN-NFV-Solutions

Thank you!

spirent sdn and nfv solutions

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