ONF Testing Labs Increase to Six in One Year
PALO ALTO, Calif., July 22, 2014 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced that the ONF OpenFlow® Conformance Testing Program has welcomed six testing labs and established the ONF Testing Leadership Council (TLC) since its inception one year ago. In addition to its four previously announced testing labs, the China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL), hosted by the China Academy of Telecommunication Research (CATR) of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in Beijing, and the Network Benchmarking Lab (NBL), co-hosted by the National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Taiwan, are now ONF-accredited labs for testing conformance to the OpenFlow® specification.
“The traction received in the first year of the program validates ONF’s responsibility to cultivate an open ecosystem of independent labs around the world that could perform conformance, benchmarking, and interoperability testing,” said Rick Bauer, technical program manager of the Open Networking Foundation. “Vendors with certified products solidify their commitment to the OpenFlow® specification; benefit from condensed development cycles, expedited product deployment, and increased opportunities for testing protocols; and ensure their solutions are interoperable once they reach the end user. The program is a real service to network operators in building their confidence in the products they buy.”
An ONF Certificate of Conformance is the highest level of assurance available in the market today and validates conformance to a particular version of the OpenFlow® specification. Vendors can earn an ONF Certificate of Conformance for networking hardware, including switches and routers, as well as network software. In the past year, ONF has selected six labs worldwide that are approved for OpenFlow® conformance testing by virtue of their having met specific objective criteria. In addition to CTTL (CATR) and NBL, the following are ONF-accredited testing facilities:
- Beijing Internet Institute (BII)
- Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs)
- Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE) at Indiana University
- University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL)
The program has accredited three member companies with OpenFlow® v1.0 conformance for their solutions including Digital China Networks (DCN), Meru Networks, and NEC. ONF has nearly completed the conformance testing specification for OpenFlow® 1.3 and has begun preliminary testing for OpenFlow® 1.3 with a dozen member companies already involved in the process.
ONF’s TLC is comprised of representatives from each ONF-accredited testing lab along with one representative from each ONF member company involved in testing for ONF-approved specifications. The council is led by Chair Erica Johnson, director of the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL), and Vice Chair Paul To, director of SDN and Cloud at Spirent Communications, who will help guide the council to:
- Develop policies, procedures, and guidelines for the effective management of testing programs for ONF in conformance, performance benchmarking, and interoperability.
- Implement best practices for testing and develop a policy and procedures manual for ONF-approved testing facilities worldwide.
- Counsel on best policies to align testing methodologies, processes, and timetables with developments in technical specifications within ONF.
“The addition of six new testing labs and the creation of the TLC show great progress and continued interest from member companies for SDN conformance,” said Erica Johnson, director of the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) and chair of the Open Networking Foundation Testing Leadership Council. “Certification of SDN solutions speeds deployment by building market confidence and enables companies to remain at the forefront of SDN innovation and commercialization. ONF is committed to expanding the testing program, and we look forward to continuing to grow an open SDN ecosystem.”
About ONF
Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 140 members whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of open SDN. ONF promotes open SDN and OpenFlow® technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: https://opennetworking.org.
