ONOS offers Cardinal, third release of SDN open operating system

The Open Network Operating System (ONOS) community has released the third version of its open software-defined networking (SDN) operating system. Cardinal (which follows the Blackbird ONOS release) adds feature sets and performance improvements, particularly in Application Intent Framework, southbound interfaces, and new distributed core features and capabilities.

Cardinal improves the performance for flow operations, application intent processing, and network topology maintenance by more than 25%, according to the ONOS project, which is led by ON.Lab (see "ON.Lab, backed by AT&T and NTT, offers open source SDN operating system"). In addition to proof of concepts (POCs) for enabling management of multi-layer IP/optical networks and migration to SDN architectures using the SDN-IP peering application, Cardinal creates several new uses by enabling the central office to be re-architected as a data center (CORD), the group asserts.

Another enhancement, a new flow-objective subsystem in the distributed core, enables device-agnostic SDN deployment. The new feature enables apps to use a variety of OpenFlow switches with support for multiple tables without being limited by device-specific details. The feature improves interoperability and is a step toward elimination of "solution silos," according to the ONOS community.

NETCONF and PCEP interfaces are now available four southbound use. The ONOS group reports that the TL1 interface will be used by two vendors for "a few" solution POCs, although TL1 is not yet available from ONOS for open source distribution.

Three research and education networks have deployed ONOS, with more slated in Europe and Asia. These include SDN-IP peering application deployments at Internet2 in the U.S. and FIU/AmLight to South America, as well as a BGP Peering Router deployment at CSIRO, Australia.

The Cardinal release is available for download at https://wiki.onosproject.org/display/ONOS/Downloads.

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