Second Release of Atrium Incorporates OpenDaylight, Improves ONOS Version, and Adds
Leaf-Spine Fabric
PALO ALTO, Calif., February 16, 2016 – The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), today announced the second release of Atrium, an open SDN software distribution, by extending it to the OpenDaylight platform. This release builds on the first open SDN software distribution, Atrium 2015/A, released by the organization last June. Atrium 2016/A is a vertically integrated set of open source components that together form a complete SDN stack and is designed to facilitate the networking industry’s adoption of open SDN by integrating established open source SDN software with some critical connecting pieces.
“In this release of Atrium, the porting to OpenDaylight provides a large and vibrant community with a new vehicle for adopting open SDN,” said Bithika Khargharia, director of Product and Community Management for the Open Networking Foundation and principal architect of Solutions and Innovation at Extreme Networks. “ONF is actively creating an ecosystem and the architecture needed to assist network operators to more easily build custom solutions and allow vendors to take advantage of common building blocks, reducing their development costs and improving interoperability.”
The focus of the second release of Atrium is the incorporation of OpenDaylight into the Atrium router. The router in this release is built on the OpenDaylight framework and controls OpenFlow® hardware switches using Quagga’s open-source implementation of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a control plane protocol for Internet routing. The most important features of Atrium’s first release, namely flow objectives and device drivers, are implemented in the OpenDaylight Device Identification and Driver Module (DIDM) that allows the router to work across multiple different OpenFlow v1.3 hardware pipelines. The work on this portion was contributed almost entirely by Criterion Networks and Wipro. Hardware from NoviFlow interoperates with the OpenDaylight implementation of Atrium, with additional vendors to follow.
“We are excited by this latest Atrium release incorporating OpenDaylight as we strive to make the adoption of open SDN broader and easier,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “Application developers seek portability across various control planes and we hope this sets an example of how it can be done. I am especially grateful to our members Criterion Networks and Wipro for undertaking this porting, and to the OpenDaylight community for their collaboration and support.”
This release of Atrium also improves the ONOS version (Atrium 2015/A) by improving scalability and stability and by adding experimental support for the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP), following interoperability demonstrations and testing in AsiaPac, Europe, and North America. Performance and scale test contributors include Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs) and improvements to the basic router have come from ON.Lab.
In addition, this version of Atrium includes a new feature called the Leaf-Spine Fabric. This is the first Layer 2/3 Clos network fabric built in open source, on Open Compute Project (OCP) hardware, and with SDN principles and notable contributions from ON.Lab, Broadcom, and Accton. The Atrium fabric is designed to scale up to 16 racks, using well-established design principles of Layer 3 down to the Top of Rack (ToR) switch, where packets from Layer 2 are switched within a rack and Layer 3 routed across racks. The fabric is set for a field trial with a major operator soon, as part of the Central Office Re-architected as Data Center (CORD) project with ON.Lab.
“Including OpenDaylight integration within Atrium 2016/A provides greater opportunities for operators and vendors to adopt open SDN architectures,” said Neela Jacques, executive director of OpenDaylight. “The increase of open SDN projects within the industry through community contributions shows that the industry is on the right path to accelerating commercial adoption of open SDN. We look forward to continued collaboration with ONF as the industry evolves its approach to open, programmable networks enabled by open source SDN.”
The second release of Atrium achieves the same objective as the first, namely to create a router or fabric by integrating application (Quagga), a network control plane (ONOS or OpenDaylight), and multiple instances of network forwarding planes (OCP components or vendor switches). The software elements run in controllers (servers) and switches, communicating via the OpenFlow protocol, and include plugin opportunities for other switching solutions to help foster an open ecosystem of interoperable, hardware-based OpenFlow switches in an integrated package that can be downloaded and deployed easily.
Atrium 2016/A is currently available for use. For more information about Atrium 2016/A and 2015/A, please visit: www.opensourcesdn.org.
About ONF
Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 130 members whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of open SDN. ONF promotes open SDN and OpenFlow technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers, and users. For further details visit the ONF website at: https://opennetworking.org.
