Leading CTOs: SDN has Great Potential; Needs Vision and Standardization

While Software­‐defined networks (SDN) is still a term used in many ways (eg. - "Ericsson CTO: Let's Redefine SDN" - here), and maybe because of that, CTOs of major equipment vendors and operators feel it needs a  "strategic vision" and standardization.

Members of the ITU CTO Meeting forum (Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Etisalat, Fujitsu, Huawei, KDDI, NEC, NSN, NTT, Orange FT, RIM, Telecom Italia, Telkom SA, Verizon and the ITU - see names here) identified  SDN as a ".. potential means to allow carrier networks to develop and deploy new services with great speed and flexibility. SDN was recognized as an innovative and perhaps also disruptive technology. SDN enables programmable interfaces to a network’s control and data planes, including capabilities such as network resource virtualization and network resource orchestration that can potentially optimize the use of network resources".

 

"CTOs noted ITU-T’s current work and standards on network virtualization frameworks and architectures, and requested that ITU-T continue exploring the applications of SDN in access networks, mobile backhaul, broadband network gateways, metro networks, and optical transport networks".
    

See "CTO MEETING COMMUNIQUÉ (Nov 18, 2012)" - here.

[Informa]: "PCC is at the heart of NG mobile data services BUT .. "

A new report by Peter Dykes (pictured), Senior Analyst, Informa Telecoms & Media concludes that "Policy control in combination with online charging is at the heart of next-generation mobile data services and, although the possibilities are well understood, there are still substantial challenges to be met. The enabling technologies are now well-developed, however, implementation and standards issues need to be resolved before all of the revenue-generating opportunities can be fully exploited".

Related post - "BroadForward CEO: "We have a very ambitious 5 year growth plan" - here.

See "Policy-driven online charging: The key to monetizing mobile data?" - here.

Standards News: BBF Released Policy Control Framework

Broadband Forum (BBF) standard for policy control : TR134 - Broadband Policy Control Framework  (here) was just released, edited by Ezer Goshen from BandWD and Bill Welch from Juniper Networks..

Abstract

TR-134 defines an architectural Framework to provide policy control of Broadband Multi-Service Networks. This Technical Report specifies business requirements, use cases, and a minimum set of Information Flows that facilitate the management and execution of policies.

The document defines ".. seven high level use cases.  The uses cases are used to describe the needs 

of Service providers and how they can be addressed using both provisioned and Policy based 

solutions.   Most of the seven use cases contain a number of more specific sub uses cases. These 

sub use cases represent the originally contributed use cases, and they have been consolidated on 

the basis of the underlying network functions that are used to address them:

• Layer 1 – 4 and QoS based Policy
• Layer 4 – 7 Traffic Policy
• Call Admission Control
• Authentication, Metering and Accounting Policy Use case
• Home Gateway use case
• Application Layer Policy [see chart below for one of the sub use cases] 
• Emergency Services Use Case"
   

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