Community Highlights – December 2021 & January 2022

We want to take a moment to highlight people and contributions that are making a substantial difference across our amazing communities. 

Table of Contents 

Aether
SD-RAN
SD-Core
SD-Fabric
SEBA/VOLTHA
P4
PINS
ONOS
OIMT
OTCC
Stratum
Ambassador Program
Developer Relations & Communities

Aether 

• Aether 1.6 Release:
  • Supports three levels of Quality-of-Service (Per-UE, Per-UE-per-Application, Per-Slice).
  • Supports Application Filtering.
  • Supports provisioning User Plane Functions (UPFs) at enterprise onboarding time, and allocating them to slices at runtime.
• Aether 2.0 Modeling:
  • Reorganized modeling tree to be more hierarchical.
  • Added models for Priority Traffic Rules.
  • Added models for SimCard and Device Management.
• Prototype All-At-Edge/Air-gapped installation.

SD-RAN

• The ONF team worked with Annie Li and Brandon Wu from Sercomm to integrate their 5G SA gNB with the SD-RAN nRT-RIC. Successful integration has been achieved with SD-RAN v1.2 and KPM xApp using E2AP 1.0.1 and E2SM-KPM-2.0.3.
• The ONF team also worked with Sonia Bhattacharya, Nishat Zaman, and Oner Orhan from Intel Labs to integrate their Connectivity Management xApp with the RIC. Successful integration has been achieved with SD-RAN v1.3 using E2SM-MHO.
• The ONF team continues to collaborate with RIMEDO labs on the O-RAN A1 interface on the RIC and associated use case, in preparation for SD-RAN v1.4.
• Additionally, the ONF team is working on a rewrite of the onos-config microservice that can be used for configuration operations as part of the O-RAN O1 interface on the RIC.

SD-Core

• SD-Core Release 1.0.0 is out.
  • New documentation site with comprehensive details about SD-Core project - Link
  • SD-Core 1.0 release Techinar was conducted and video can be found here. 
  • Release Notes here.
  • SD-Core 1.0 Release Blog.
  • Year 2021 review and plan ahead blog.
  • SD-Core  1.0.1 is released with some more fixes in SD-Core.  SD-Core Release 1.0.1 (Aether 1.6.1 Release) is currently deployed in the Aether production network.  
• SD-Core Release 1.1.0 Features in progress 
  • gNodeB - Vini Gajjar from GS Lab added Service Request support in gNodeB simulator. gNodeB is now integrated with helm chart CI/CD setup. Testing team is working on automation testing using gNodeB.
  • End to end QoS support with various operations control is planned for SD-Core 1.1 Release. PCF will push the configured application rules and corresponding QoS towards SMF using Session Rules & PCC rules. SMF changes to install rules in UPF and towards UE are in progress.
  • Evaluation of Open API generator to generate code based on 3gpp openapi specification  is done.
  • Cloud native 
    • We are working on moving subscriber states from AMF to database. This will make AMF handle the failures and persist subscriber states.
    • We are working on changing the way metrics are exposed from SD-Core. This architecture Metric Architecture changes.

SD-Fabric

• QoS
  • Carmelo (ONF) refactored SlicingService to support queue configuration via ONOS network configs.
• P4-UPF
  • Daniele and Tomasz (ONF) completed a refactoring of the UP4 logical pipeline to improve scalability and support per-application QoS/filtering.
• BESS-UPF
  • Max (ONF) fixed an app filtering issue where L4 ports are not processed correctly. He also fixed an issue that was preventing the installation of app-filtering rules with default policy ALLOW-PUBLIC.
• Maintenance
  • Emanuele (ONF) started improving PFCP-Agent test framework by introducing a newly-implemented, golang-based mock SMF.
  • Pier (ONF) started working on persistent mastership support, which will improve FlowRuleService stability during mastership transition.
  • Wailok (ONF) addressed an issue we found when replicating the UPF state in distributed UPF setups, causing data flow traffic to be dropped.
  • Tomasz (ONF) made a number of clean ups, refactorings, and CI improvements to improve maintainability of the code base.
• Operation
  • Charles (ONF) deployed simplified Aether network architecture to multiple sites. This eliminates the management server from the UE data path. It also supports access devices behind L3-routed enterprise networks.
  • Yi (ONF) started working on P4RT port translation in Stratum. This will allow us to use the front panel port number in ONOS configurations instead of the confusing SDK port number, and will significantly reduce configuration errors.
• Testing
  • Jon (Ciena) started integrating PFCP-Agent in the SD-Fabric integration tests.
  • Siddesh (ONF) started adding more test cases for 5G and route blackholing.

SEBA/VOLTHA

• In December the VOLTHA community released VOLTHA 2.9. Please read the release notes and watch the webinar.
• Key highlights of the 2.9 release are:
  • Move to gRPC for inter container communication (Thanks in particular to Khen, David from Ciena).
  • Complete rewrite of the OLT application for ONOS. (Thanks in particular to Matteo and Andrea from ONF and Yasin from Nestia for testing).
  • Transparent OLT workflow to support Telecom Italia (TIM) (Thanks in particular to Mario, Marika, Giacomo and Antonio from Reply and Andrea from ONF).
  • ONU interaction enhancements in openonu adapter (Thanks to Michael, Holger, Torsten from Adtran, Girish from ONF, Chip from Tibit and Himani from Ciena).
  • Move to ONOS 2.5.5 with bug fixes to support ISSU, Broadcom Abstraction Layer (BAL) has been moved to BAL 3.10.2.2 (thanks to the BAL brigade and Girish from ONF.
  • Extended testing for the openonu adapter (thanks Torsten from ADTRAN and Hardik from ONF).
  • Extended multicast tests for TT (thanks to Hardik from ONF).
• Work has also started for the 2.10 release.
• POTS UNI support was introduced in BBSIM thanks to Elia from ONF.
• Disable/Delete ONU fixes have been introduced thanks to Ozge from Netsia and Holger from Adtran.
• ONOS has been moved to 2.5.6 with karaf 4.2.14 to fix the log4j exploit. Thanks to Andrea from ONF.
• New tests for the openonu adapter, scale and rolling upgrade have been added. Thanks to Torsten from ADTRAN, Hardik, Teo and Andrea from ONF. 
• Design discussion for the FTTB implementation has been completed, thanks to the whole community and in particular the TST with Amit from Radisys.

P4

• The P4 community held two events in December. Check out the available talks from these events:
  • • Euro P4 Workshop.
    • P4 Workshop Taiwan.
• Intel has contributed several projects implementing a network device API called the Table Driven Interface (TDI) to GitHub in Sep-Oct 2021.  In Jan 2022 Sayan Bandyopadhyay gave a presentation to the P4 API working group; the recording is accessible on YouTube.

PINS 

• Jonathan DiLorenzo, Robert Halstead, and Steffen Smolka (Google) improved the P4Runtime service, enhanced the SAI P4 program, and added several test cases.
• Runming Wu and Yilan Ji (Google) enhanced QoS (rate limiting and packet counting) in the P4 orchagent.
• Runming drafted a new high level design that introduces critical state in SONiC. Writes are blocked during critical state to avoid gray failures and allow an administrator to analyze and debug the system.
• Don Newton, Niloofar Toorchi (ONF), and Ravi Vantipalli (Intel) fixed bugs in the upstream 202111 and master branches to enable PINS to build and run. 
• Judy Snow (ONF) developed a tutorial to teach users how to enable PINS, push forwarding rules using a CLI tool, and connect a PINS device to ONOS. The tutorial is currently under review in the PINS working group and will be made available to the broader community soon.
• Bhagat Janarthanan (Google), Reshma Sudarshan (Intel), and Brian O’Connor (ONF) defined the May release feature set, including Packet I/O, critical state, testing enhancements, and SAI P4 extensions.

ONOS

• Rewrite of onos-config (part of µONOS architecture) nears the end of its completion. The new design greatly simplifies the YANG model plugin mechanism, reduces complexity in general and addresses a number of defects and limitations of the old implementation.
• Minor enhancements were made to the onos-topo subsystem to further improve the ability to query network topology entities and their relationships.
• ONOS 2.7.0 LTS released at the start of the year - see blog-post for more details
• We are kicking off the 2022 elections process for ONOS. We wish to thank Andrea Campanella and Charles Chan for their service the past two years! However their term is now coming to an end and we will be electing two new steering team members.
  • First action you need to take is to make sure you are on the voting list.  List is posted here on the wiki. If you are not on the list and have made contributions during 2021, or if the list has incorrect information about you, please contact jo@opennetworking.org.
  • Second action is to make nominations. TST - we have 2 positions in total as a result of expiring terms. The last day to accept nominations will be February 11, 2022. Send your nominations directly to jo@opennetworking.org.

OIMT

• Progress made in the effort, led by Martin Skorupski (Highstreet Technologies), of proposing an O-RAN project on UML-YANG Mapping tooling, based on ONF TR-531 “UML-YANG Mapping Guidelines” and the IISOMI developed xmi2yang codes. The proposal reached the next level and moved from O-RAN TSC to O-RAN Executive Committee (EC). Discussion in O-RAN EC will start.
• The ONF TR-512 “Core Information Model” v1.5 release is now also available on the ONF github repository.
  • The OnfModel folder of this repository contains the source codes of the Papyrus UML model files of CoreInfoModel v1.5.
  • The TR-512_v1.5_Published folder contains the full publication of the release.
  • Chief editor Nigel Davis (Ciena) and Co-editor Kam Lam (FiberHome).

OTCC

• The OTCC TST approved two new TRs, ONF TR-547 TAPI Reference Implementation Agreement v1.1, under the editorship of Ramon Casellas (CTTC) and ONF TR-548, a related new TR TAPI Reference Implementation Agreement -  Streaming v1.1, under the editorship of Nigel Davis (Ciena).  Both specifications are now uploaded to the ONF website.
• Both specifications are the work of the TAPI sub-team under Andrea Mazzini (Nokia) and are being referenced by the TIP MUST (Mandatory Use Case Requirements for SDN for Transport) subgroup as part of their technical requirements for evaluation of SDN commercial solutions.  A blog entry for this is in progress.
• OTCC TST membership has been updated due to job changes on the part of some members and member additions based on contributions and expertise.  A section of the OTCC wiki was added to note appreciation for previous TST members.

Stratum

• Brian O’Connor, Max Pudelko, and Yi Tseng (ONF) released Stratum 21.12 which included a number of small but critical bug fixes.
• Rich Renner (Sunder Networks) fixed a bug that could return the wrong OpenConfig port ID.
• Yi added support for P4Runtime port translation, which allows users to specify the port numbers for a given switch instead of relying on the vendor-specific hardcoded mapping.
• Kevin O’Connor, Brian, and Max upgraded and enhanced TLS credential management for gRPC connections and added several tests.
• Max cleaned up several areas of the code base, removed stale code, and upgraded dependencies.

Ambassador Program

• It is this time of the year when we will be electing new members to our Ambassador Program Steering Team (aka, A-team). We wish to thank Lukasz Lukowski (Edgecore Networks, Leszno, Wielkopolskie, Poland), Scott Swail (Lumentum, San Jose, California, USA), and Ain Indermitte (ONF, Eagle, Idaho, USA) for their service the past two years! However, their term is now coming to an end and we will be electing three new A-team members for the next two years.
• The first action ONF would like you to take is to make sure you are on the voting list. Please check Ambassador ST Voting List 2022.
  • If you are not on the list, but are an active ambassador, a member company representative, or have made code contributions to any ONF project during 2021; or if the list has incorrect information about you, please let jo@opennetworking.org know.
• Secondly, ONF encourages you to make nominations for the vacant positions. We are looking for nominations for the following positions:
  • Ambassador Program ST (aka, A-team) member - three (3) open positions 
• The last day to accept nominations will be Monday, February 21.  We look forward to hearing from you!
• For your reference, you can find Ambassador Program governance here.

Developer Relations and Communities

• See all community contributions in the ONF Community Dashboard