Netcracker Technology and its parent company NEC have partnered with Infinera and Juniper Networks on a Transport SDN solution intended to transform how networks are managed and controlled.
The combined solution uses Infinera's Intelligent Transport Networks; Juniper's capabilities in IP/MPLS, physical/virtual network functionality and domain orchestration; and NEC/Netcracker's multilayer control and service orchestration, including NEC's network transport products. The solution is designed to provide full visibility across all IP, optical and microwave domains, including SDN and traditional network environments, optimize network utilization and automate service provisioning and path restoration.
The solution is intended to enabling networks to intelligently adapt to the requirements of end users with the ability to carve out network slices for specific services. It's designed to accommodate changing traffic patterns and on-demand customer requests, and also to optimize capacity usage. Additionally, the solution is intended to let service providers automate their network service infrastructure.
NEC/Netcracker, Infinera and Juniper demonstrated their joint solution as part of the Optical Interworking Forum (OIF)/Open Networking Foundation (ONF) Transport API project where the participants executed a multidomain path selection and recovery test plan with intra-lab and inter-lab testing across multiple global carrier labs, including both Verizon's and Telefónica's. In the demo, NEC/Netcracker's Multilayer SDN Controller used the new Transport API defined by the ONF to communicate with Juniper's NorthStar Controller at Verizon's lab and the Infinera Xceed optical SDN domain controllers at Telefónica's lab. NEC/Netcracker's Service Orchestration solution created and managed Ethernet point-to-point private services across multiple vendors and multiple operators' domains. All tests were completed successfully, the companies said.
"We are excited to bring this new solution to market, showcasing how virtualization can enable a completely new set of automation and optimization opportunities to enhance networks with innovative visualization, operations, optimized capacity planning and utilization functionality," said Aloke Tusnial, chief technology officer, SDN/NFV Business, at Netcracker. "By partnering with industry leaders like Juniper and Infinera, NEC/Netcracker is bringing a pre-integrated best-of-breed solution that offers customers flexibility and choice in fundamentally rethinking their network design and level of automation."