ONF to stage massive CORD demo at MWC 2018

cloud data center CORD
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The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) has unveiled details of its showcase for the upcoming Mobile World Congress that will promote the latest innovations and benefits of the CORD platform which leverages SDN, NFV and cloud technologies to build agile data centers for the network edge.

The MWC showcase will feature numerous edge cloud innovations integrated into a cohesive CORD POD, an ONOS Controlled P4 switching fabric and a community that integrated the most complex forward-looking 5G open demonstration to date.

The ONF will host a single unified demo on a live network highlighting the power of a CORD-based solution while showcasing numerous technological breakthroughs, including:

  • A multi-vendor programmable P4 Fabric, including switches featuring Barefoot, Cavium and Mellanox switching silicon
  • VNF Offloading, with 3GPP user plane running in P4 hardware, with hardware from Barefoot and software from the ONOS Project
  • ONAP Integration for configuring network slices and ProgRAN (programmable RAN) thanks to contributions from Netsia
  • Facial recognition support, leveraging GPU acceleration, contributed by Arm
  • Low-latency closed-loop analytics with ONAP DCAE integration from Mariner SONAR4
  • End-to-End network slicing, with separate RAN and EPC slices provided by Netsia
  • M-CORD based MEC platform with local breakout, VoLTE/Video and AR/VR services and ONAP driven complete life-cycle management and automation of NFV based virtual functions to demonstrate how M-CORD can be deployed by operators to deliver edge services, provided by Radisys.
  • Multi-vendor hardware heterogeneity in a single operating CORD POD, including:
    • P4 programmable switching hardware from 3 different vendors
    • Arm(R)-based and Intel® Architecture-based servers
    • NIC-based GPU acceleration
    • Smart Remote Radio Unit and eNodeB from Cavium
  • End-to-end CORD integration from Ciena and Radisys

ONF added the demo will also highlight additional benefits of that it says will continue to fuel adoption, including:

  • New 100x performance, cost, power and space savings enabled by industry-first hardware-based VNF acceleration with SDN
  • Per-subscriber real-time orchestration, with XOS chaining together VNFs on both servers and programmable P4 switches to instantiate custom services for individual subscribers
  • Hierarchical orchestration and automation, with ONAP as a global orchestrator and CORD as the intelligent edge cloud infrastructure with real-time subscriber orchestration
  • Interoperability with ETSI MEC, demonstrating the flexibility of the CORD architecture and the effort to work with the broadest possible community of stakeholders
  • First commercial grade virtual function (vMRF) with complete life-cycle management and policy driven automation via ONAP on CORD platform
  • Demonstrating the power of open source by highlighting how 17 collaborating organizations created a single unified 5G demo in just 3 months
  • Mobile Access Edge Compute services including VoLTE, edge video processing, and advanced VR/AR requiring high bandwidth low latency services on CORD platform.

The demo will be sponsored by ARM, Barefoot Networks, Intel, Mariner Partners, Netsia, and Radisys. Telcos supporting and defining use cases for the demonstration include AT&T, China Unicom, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, Google, NTT Group and Turk Telecom. Technology collaborators include Cavium, Ciena, Mellanox and the ONOS Project.

“The ONF is excited to see the power of our open systems community put to work at Mobile World Congress.  The unprecedented degree of technical innovation being highlighted in 2018 is a testament to the commitment of many dedicated collaborators who have embraced and risen to the challenge of this monumental demo,” said Oguz Sunay, M-CORD chief architect at the Open Networking Foundation.

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