Huawei Unveils Innovative Carrier SDN Prototype Series

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, has unveiled a series of new solutions for end-to-end software defined networking (SDN) architecture of telecom carrier networks.
Previewed at the recently held SDN & OpenFlow World Congress, Huawei demonstrated several Carrier SDN prototypes, including a generic SDN controller for hybrid SDN networking, an optical line terminal (OLT) containing an SDN controller, a broadband network gateway (BNG) based on SDN architecture, and an SDN controller for transport networks. Huawei also demonstrated the application of Carrier SDN technology in access networks, metro networks, transport networks, and data centers.
Huawei has been playing an active role in the international effort to standardize SDN cooperating with operators, research institutes, and other equipment vendors to enhance the technological maturity of Carrier SDN and make it ready for live networks.
According to Dr. Justin Joubine Dustzadeh, CTO & VP Technology Strategy – Networks at Huawei, SDN technology has been deployed primarily for inter data-center networks. Huawei has taken the lead in proposing Carrier SDN architecture, a broader approach to SDN that extends its application to telecom carrier networks.
“Software-defined networking will enable operators to become more competitive by offering truly differentiating services. It will also help optimize the use of network resources while reducing operational costs. This can be achieved through the separation of the control plane from the data plane via standardized interfaces and the use of a programmatic control plane with open APIs for 3rd-party application development and integration with operations support systems (OSS). This vision can be further enhanced through the orchestration between centralized controllers in different network domains and the virtualization of various network functions leveraging the IT industry’s latest innovations,” said Dr. Dustzadeh.
Given the company’s extensive experience in working with network operators, Huawei believes that SDN will bring a unique value in each network domain. In the access domain, for example, SDN will help operators simplify the management of a large number of remote nodes. With the BNG, SDN will provide an open and scalable 3rd-party application development environment to increase the agility of creating new value-added services. For transport networks, SDN will enable more flexible and fine-grained provisioning and control of bandwidth resources. This flexibility will allow operators to provide Optical-as-a-Service offerings with user-defined and application-specific QoS at different levels of service agreements.