ADVA, University Team For First-Time SDN Testbed

In what the company says is an industry first, ADVA Optical Networking “successfully implemented new OpenFlow technology that can dynamically control wavelength-switched optical networks.”

The implementation is based on the FSP 3000 and was developed in cooperation with the University of Essex in Germany as part of the OFELIA project. OFELIA provides researchers with a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) testbed to experiment with new applications using a Web-services approach.

The SDN facility at University of Essex comprises packet switches and application servers that can be connected dynamically by optical lightpaths. External users can access the facility directly via GÉANT, a high-bandwidth pan-European backbone that interconnects national research and education networks.

“It has been exciting developing this OpenFlow solution with the team at ADVA Optical Networking,” says Professor Dimitra Simeonidou, head of the High Performance Networks Group at the University of Essex. “Together, we have built an SDN testbed with packet and wavelength switches under a common OpenFlow control. This is something that has never been done before. Researchers can now obtain slices of network infrastructure to program their own virtual multilayer networks. They can use optical switching alongside packet switching to adapt bandwidth, latency and power consumption to their application needs.”??

Using one common OpenFlow control for both the packet and optical layer, ADVA says users now can obtain “much more effective network solutions required for efficient data-center interconnections and forward-looking cloud-computing applications.”??

“SDN presents a tremendous opportunity for customers to streamline and automate network infrastructure and operations,” comments CTO Christoph Glingener. “While server and storage virtualization have been widely adopted, network virtualization is still in its infancy. SDN closes this gap by offering programmable network control, better scalability and faster adaption to virtual machine mobility.”

He continues, “We have proven that SDN can seamlessly extend into the optical domain and enables network virtualization across multiple layers. The OpenFlow approach extends our existing SDN solution employing our RAYcontrol control plane.”?