As global communications providers prepare to deliver high-speed connectivity to support new services and use cases, the need for low-latency, high-bandwidth, scalable networks is more important than ever. Conventional industry hardware won’t sustain next-generation mobile technology; the need for cloud native is essential for delivering the performance, capabilities, and automation 5G requires. Benefits include operational consistency, application resilience, simplified and responsive scaling at the microservice level, simplified integration with enterprise-facing cloud native applications, and improved portability between public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.
To address these needs, the OPNFV community began work in 2017 on a Virtual Central Office demo (VCO 1.0) to show demonstrate the interoperability of virtual components of a virtualized central office use case for NFV/SDN. This demo was shown as a keynote at the OPNFV Summit in Beijing, China, 2017. The demo has gone through several iterations, including VCO 2.0, shown as a keynote at ONS and OCP Summit in Amsterdam, a VCO 3.0 5G Cloud Native Network demo shown as a keynote at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in San Diego, and finally a 5G Cloud Native Network with ONAP integration shown virtually as a keynote at ONES in 2020 (demo begins at 29:50). Over the last 4 years, over 100 volunteers across 5 open source communities, 20 partner companies, and 2 end users have collaborated to build this Proof of Concept.
Group Communications
Mailing List: https://lists.lfnetworking.org/g/lfn-demo. Please subscribe to remain up to date on demo evolution and planning.
Bi-Weekly Meeting Calendar: https://lists.lfnetworking.org/g/lfn-demo/calendar. Get the meeting information here.
Slack Channel: https://join.slack.com/t/lfn-demo/shared_invite/zt-nkmmn4gh-Z5wUZNgo_tOJ958s31PGTQ. See and contribute to the latest technical conversations here.
Meeting Agenda/Minutes: https://wiki.lfnetworking.org/x/GgADAw. Catch up on the latest and see what's coming up.
Suggestions for 2021
- Maintain, grow, and evolve the 5G Cloud Native Network Demo
- Look to add new features and expand to new use cases (e.g. 5G Network Slicing, RAN integration, etc.)
- Provide better visibility across LFN on ongoing demo status, reqs, and how to get involved
- Infra: Move onto LFN Infra for all comms tools (wiki email, slack)
- Interface with the LFN TAC
- Update EUAG on status, solicit feedback
- Develop a TAC-led whitepaper covering the demo
- Evolve to integrate Anuket (RA2 + RC2)
- Update to ONAP Guilin (then Honolulu when available)
- Secure end user “hands-on” participation
- Highlight in webinar mid-year if possible (and highlight again at ONES in the fall)
- Provide detailed “How to Guide” to replicate demo in labs
- Use the demo to attract new community participants and members
- Require LFN membership for ongoing participation / marketing features
- Provide updates across LFN channels
- Links on LF and LFN "Resources" pages
- Tie-in to developer highlights
- Step 1 Update to ONAP Guilin
- Step 1a- recruit ONAP demo SME