Open Network Featured Article

Interoperability is a wonderful thing, and generally for every side of the equation. Not only do businesses get more access to new components and equipment, but those who supply such materials get access to more markets. Recently, Infinera opened up its own borders with a new interoperability connection, joining both the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF (News - Alert)) and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF).

In conjunction with this, photonic integrated circuit (PIC) maker Infinera brought out a new demonstration in software defined networking (SDN) transport application programming interface (T-API) system known as the Infinera Xceed (News - Alert) Software Suite, along with the DTN-X set of platforms for packet optical transfer.

Xceed is built around the OpenDaylight SDN controller, an open source mechanism that helps drive programmable multi-layer transport networks. That's a great start by itself, and with Infinera (News - Alert)'s new membership in the OIF and ONF, it can work toward helping the entire organization bring out SDN on a commercial basis through greater testing and release of T-API systems. Recent testing rounds have brought in both multi-layer and multi-domain, and have been joined in by several other carriers, including China Telecom and China Unicom, as well as Verizon (News - Alert), among others.

Infinera's vice president of network strategy, Chris Liou, commented “Network operators across the globe are implementing software defined networks to increase service agility and automate multi-vendor network management. Infinera is delighted to work with the OIF, ONF and industry leading carriers to demonstrate how our open software solutions interoperate in a multi-vendor environment to accelerate service delivery while simplifying network operations.”

While it's great to have Infinera with the OIF and ONF, it's more functionally better to have it working toward interoperability. Interoperability is useful comparatively rapidly, while the work with the OIF and ONF will produce benefits down the line for the entire industry. That makes this a smart move not only for today, but also for tomorrow, and that's a development that's hard not to get behind. Improving commercialized SDN is also worth doing; right now, SDN has been kind of lagging its cohort, network functions virtualization (NFV), which has been regarded as more of a commercial operation. Some commercial operations for SDN have happened, but not as many as NFV. This work might help change that, and give businesses some new options.

New options seldom go unwelcome, thanks to the nature of a competitive market. The more there is to pick from, the better the deals are for the pickers, and the better chance all products will improve to produce a competitive edge. That's a great end result, and one that wouldn't be, if only in part, without the OIF, ONV, and Infinera working together.