AT&T and Others Launch the OpenDaylight SDN Alternative

Although there is an increasing level of excitement and a momentum is getting built up, everyone is still not on the same page regarding the Open source SDN project by OpenDaylight. ON.Lab orthe Open Networking Lab is a non-profit organization which was founded by the SDN pioneers from the Stanford University and the UC Berkeley. They have successfully launched their own open source SDN operating system which is an alternative to the amount of work that is being received from the vendor-driven OpenDaylight.

So what is ON.Lab’s Open Network Operating System (ONOS)? 

This network operating system has been designed to enable the agile service deployment and creation at scale on any kind of hardware which includes the one with the white boxes. OpenDaylight, which is basically a vendor driven effort are aimed for preserving the incumbency of the brand name hardware. This was confirmed by the ON.Lab officials.

According to ON.Lab executive director, Guru Parulkar, all these noises regarding the SDN have been received from the Vendors, he also adds that OpenDaylight is targeted and focused on the command line interface automation, which is utilized for configuring legacy hardware.

It doesn’t aim to bring out the SDN values to the service providers; these values include revenue, service delivery, lower operating costs and offering the white box hardware alternatives. According to IDC analyst Brad Casemore, carriers are excited to learn how the major hyperscale player design and also controls their infrastructure.

OpenDaylight and ONOS

OpenDaylight has been able to gain the confidence of many companies due to momentum from their recent code releases. While on one side HP and Dell have raised their interest in the participation, Brocade will also be shipping out an OpenDaylight-based SDN controller.

ONOS also delivers an SDN control plane just like OpenDaylight, and this feature southbound and northbound APIs, a range for management, a range for the control as well as a range of service applications. Although this operating system has been currently targeted at service providers, the extended goals of the company are to extend this platform to cloud service providers, mainstream and enterprise deployments.

ONOS is expected to be released in December and will be available for downloading. The companies who funded as well as developed ONOS includes Ciena, NTT Communications, AT&T, Huawei, Fujitsu, NEC and INTEL with additional contributions from the companies like Internet2, SRI, CNIT, Infoblox and Create-Net.

The Open Networking Foundation, which is a proponent of OpenFlow-based SDNs, also supported ONOS. Right from the beginning there were unseen tensions between ONF and ONOS.

According to OpenDaylight executive director, Neela Jacques, the ODL developer community is very excited for the new codes and they are hoping for more collaboration between all the developers so they can learn new things and add further research in the ODL.

They are hoping to see how ONOS will be building mechanism to allow people to participate, use and contribute to the current code database.

Ultimately the ODL intends to encourage the adoption of the SDN by defeating the fragmentation in the industry.