Ciena picks ONAP’s policy code to enhance Blue Planet
Operators want to use automation to help tackle the growing complexity and cost of operating their networks.
Kevin Wade“Policy plays a key role in this goal by enabling the creation and administration of rules that automatically modify the network’s behaviour,” says Kevin Wade, senior director of solutions, Ciena’s Blue Planet.
Incorporating ONAP code to enhance Blue Planet’s policy engine also advances Ciena’s own vision of the adaptive network.
Automation platforms
ONAP and Ciena’s Blue Planet are examples of network automation platforms.
ONAP is an open software initiative created by merging a large portion of AT&T’s original Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) software developed to power its own software-defined network and the OPEN-Orchestrator (OPEN-O) project, set up by several companies including China Mobile, China Telecom and Huawei.
ONAP’s goal is to become the default automation platform for service providers as they move to a software-driven network using such technologies as network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN).
Blue Planet is Ciena’s own open automation platform for SDN and NFV-based networks. The platform can be used to manage Ciena’s own platforms and has open interfaces to manage software-defined networks and third-party equipment.
Ciena gained the Blue Planet platform with the acquisition of Cyan in 2015. Since then Ciena has added two main elements.
One is the Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) component that oversees Ciena's own telecom equipment. Ciena’s Liquid Spectrum that adds intelligence to its optical layer is part of MCP.
The second platform component added is analytics software to collect and process telemetry data to detect trends and patterns in the network to enable optimisation.
“We have 20-plus [Blue Planet] customers primarily on the orchestration side,” says Wade. These include Windstream, Centurylink and Dark Fibre Africa of South Africa. Out of these 20 or so customers, one fifth do not use Ciena’s equipment in their networks. One such operator is Orange, another Blue Planet user Ciena has named.
A further five service providers are trialing an upgraded version of MCP, says Wade, while two operators are using Blue Planet’s analytics software.
In a closed-loop automation process, the policy subsystem guides the orchestration or the SDN controller, or both, to take actions
Policy
Ciena has been a member of the ONAP open source initiative for one year. By integrating ONAP’s policy components into Blue Planet, the platform will support more advanced closed-loop network automation use cases, enabling smarter adaptation.
“In a closed-loop automation process, the policy subsystem guides the orchestration or the SDN controller, or both, to take actions,” says Wade. Such actions include scaling capacity, restoring the network following failure, and automatic placement of a virtual network function to meet changing service requirements.
In return for using the code, Ciena will contribute bug fixes back to the open source venture and will continue the development of the policy engine.
The enhanced policy subsystem’s functionalities will be incorporated over several Blue Planet releases, with the first release being made available later this year. “Support for the ONAP virtual network function descriptors and packaging specifications are available now,” says Wade.
The adaptive network
Software control and automation, in which policy plays an important role, is one key component of Ciena's envisaged adaptive network.
A second component is network analytics and intelligence. Here, real-time data collected from the network is fed to intelligent systems to uncover the required network actions.
The final element needed for an adaptive network is a programmable infrastructure. This enables network tuning in response to changing demands.
What operators want, says Wade, is automation, guided by analytics and intent-based policies, to scale, configure, and optimise the network based on a continual reading to detect changing demands.
Nuage uses SDN to aid enterprise connectivity needs
"Across the WAN and out to the branch, the context is increasingly complicated, with the need to deliver legacy and cloud applications to users - and sometimes customers - that are increasingly mobile, spanning several networks," says Brad Casemore, research director, data centre networks at IDC. These networks can include MPLS, Metro Ethernet, broadband and 3G and 4G wireless.
The data centre is a great microcosm of the network - Houman Modarres
At present, remote offices use custom equipment that require a visit from an engineer. In contrast, VNS uses SDN technology to deliver enterprise services to a generic box, or software that runs on the enterprise's server. The goal is to speed up the time it takes an enterprise to set up or change their business services at a remote site, while also simplifying the service provider's operations.
What has been done
Nuage designed its SDN-enabled connectivity products from the start for use in the data centre and beyond. "The data centre is a great microcosm of the network," says Modarres. "But we designed it in such a way that the end points could be flexible, within and across data centres but also anywhere."
Nuage uses open protocols like OpenFlow to enable the control plane to talk to any device, while its software agents that run on a server can work with any hypervisor. The control plane-based policies are downloaded to the end points via its SDN controller.
Using VNS, services can be installed without a visit from a specialist engineer. A user powers up the generic hardware or server and connects it to the network whereby policies are downloaded. The user enters a sent code that enables their privileges as defined by the enterprise's policies.
"Just as in the data centre, there is a real need for greater agility through automation, programmability, and orchestration," says IDC's Casemore. "One could even contend that for many enterprises, the pain is more acutely felt on the WAN, especially as they grapple with how to adapt to cloud and mobility."
Extending the connectivity end points beyond the data centre has required Nuage to bolster security and authentication procedures. Modarres points out that data centers and service provider central offices are secured environments; a remote office that could be a worker's home is not.
"You need to do authentication differently and IPsec connections are needed for security, but what if you unplug it? What if it is stolen?" he says. "If someone goes to the bank and steals a router, are they a bank branch now?"
To address this, once a remote office device is unplugged for a set time - typically several minutes - its configuration is reset. Equally, when a router is deliberated unplugged, for example during an office move, if notification is given, the user receives a new authentication code on the move's completion and the policies are restored.
Nuage's virtualised services platform comprise three elements: the virtualised services directory (VSD), virtualised services controller (VSC) - the SDN controller - and the virtual routing and switching module (VR&S).
"The only thing we are changing is the bottom layer, the network end point, which used to be in the data centre as the VR&S, and is now broken out of the data centre, as in the network services gateway, to be anywhere," says Modarres. "The network services gateway has physical and virtual form factors based on standard open compute."
Nuage is finding that businesses are benefitting from an SDN approach in surprising ways.
The company cites banks as an example that are forced by regulation to ensure that there are no security holes at their remote locations. One bank with 400 branches periodically sends individuals to each to check the configuration to ensure no human errors in its set-up could lead to a security flaw. With 400 branches, this procedure takes months and is costly.
With SDN and its policy-level view of all locations - what each site and what each group can do - there are predefined policy templates. There may be 10, 20 or 30 templates but they are finite, says Modarres: "At the push of a button, an organisation can check the templates, daily if needed".
This is not why a bank will adopt SDN, says Modarres, but the compliance department will be extremely encouraging for the technology to be used, especially when it saves the department millions of dollars in ensuring regulatory compliance.
Nuage Networks says it has 15 customer wins and 60 ongoing trials globally for its products. Customers that have been identified include healthcare provider UPMC, financial services provider BBVA, cloud provider Numergy, hosting provider OVH, infrastructure providers IDC Frontier and Evonet, and telecom providers TELUS and NTT Communications.