Open Network Featured Article

With the merger of the ON (News - Alert).Lab group and the Open Networking Foundation, it would be easy to say that open networking has truly gone mainstream, and that we should be looking for a flood of developments in the field to follow. Some of those developments have already come to light, and one of the latest such developments has recently arrived from the Cord Project.

The Cord Project recently got together with the xRAN Foundation, which was known for its work in radio access networks (RAN), to produce a new step forward in open networking concepts. With the duo working together, the end result is to be a new open reference implementation of how to use xRAN's specifications within the M-Cord system, thus helping to produce the next generation of RAN systems.

This is good news for anyone working in RAN, as the clock was ticking on getting next generation systems together on this front anyway. The incoming arrival of 5G's commercial releases—still set for sometime in 2020—will require some changes to RAN use, reports note, and so the RAN architecture is undergoing some serious retooling ahead of the new arrival.

The duo will be focusing on standards, more specifically software-defined standards, for architecture and interface definitions, as well as implementing standard application programming interfaces (APIs) across the system.  Also on tap is a RAN controller that's built around the Open Network Operating System (ONOS) and some control applications built for the M-Cord Platform.

Since xRAN interfaces are commonly used to let carriers control multi-vendor RAN infrastructure, and we're about to see a lot more demand for infrastructure coming up here as 5G makes its arrival, it's easy to see why groups like  the Cord Project and xRAN are looking to shore up the processes that may be connected with these infrastructure changes coming up.

It's seldom a bad idea to improve infrastructure in general, especially when major changes are about to impact the overall system. It's also hard to describe 5G as anything but a “major change,” as it's poised to fundamentally alter the way we connect to the Web on a daily basis in a lot of cases. So for xRAN and the Cord Project to be getting together like this well in advance of 5G's commercial arrival is a smart move, and one that's likely to leave this pair poised for dominance going forward.

It's going to take a lot of work to get all those systems out there ready for 5G, and it's good to see the work to get these ready has already begun. It improves the likelihood that we'll all get a better experience in the end.