Rick Bauer recaps the first ONF AppFest and its success in presenting apps, switches, and controllers in one environment.
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Participants enjoy one of the “Lunch and Learn” sessions at the AppFest.[/caption]
Nearly 60 participants and scores of companies gathered at the Ericsson HQ in San Jose this past week, seeking to take ONF PlugFests a step further into testing and deploying trusted SDN solutions. Representatives of switch companies, controller vendors (including leading open source controllers Ryu, OpenDaylight, and others), and application developers met for the first time to find out what happens when a robust SDN infrastructure is created and companies work together.
In addition to OpenFlow® 1.3 conformance pre-testing (the OFTest spec is in review as I write this), participants were also able to try out the proposed performance benchmarking specifications for both switches and controllers, currently in development but soon to be proposed for formal specification. All agreed that these benchmarks will help manufacturers and their customers evaluate equipment performance accurately.
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Benjamin Eze from Inocybe details aspects of the “Boulder” project for intent-based forwarding.[/caption]
The newest wrinkle at the event was the presence of open source applications, and what really opened up the testing this past week was the presence of several applications that ran in the SDN environments, including programs that optimized high-frequency stock trading (imagine how SDN/OpenFlow® can optimize and validate hundreds of thousands of purchases, where microseconds can enable a significant advantage in trading), in human gene sequencing in cancer research (again, SDN providing insight and more effectively routing genomic data to enable quicker sequencing), and other applications such as cybersecurity and DNS management. Attendees also learned about OpenSourceSDN projects like Atrium, Aspen, Durango, and Boulder, and are making plans to begin testing and evaluating these code bases. Everyone agreed that “the apps are the clear game-changer” here, and plans are already in the works for future events.
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Stu Bailey from Infoblox develops his point during one of the “Lunch and Learn” sessions.[/caption]
Thanks to the wonderful hosts at Ericsson for a fantastic facility, warm hospitality (their cafeteria is our best food yet!), and any Ericsson ONF friends who came by the event to say hello. We appreciated the Ericsson ODL team, their switch teams, and many of their application developers who also participated in the event.
Reports will be published detailing all the significant accomplishments, but suffice to say that all the participants left feeling excited, thrilled, and completely exhausted from five days of extensive activity.
- Rick Bauer, Director of Technical Programs
