OREANDA-NEWS. ADTRAN®, Inc., (NASDAQ:ADTN), a leading provider of next-generation open networking solutions, announced that it has successfully demonstrated the industry’s first open and multi-vendor virtual Customer Premise Equipment (vCPE) during the New IP Agency’s (NIA) Interoperability Showcase, and again as part of the interoperability event at Light Reading’s Big Communications Event. As the market moves toward adopting the new, flexible and open software-defined access framework for networking, demonstrating the ability to move beyond theoretical with a fully functional vCPE solution is a leap forward for the industry, our customers and ADTRAN.

EANTC provided the carrier class test bed for the NIA’s Interoperability Showcase and was designed to address Service Function Chaining. 12 vendors participated in the event and together achieved six multi-vendor combinations of orchestrated service function chains (SFCs) on a range of NFV infrastructure (NFVI) solutions. During the testing, vendors that were able to participate successfully interoperated to create advanced vCPE combinations with virtualized firewalls, deep packet inspection filters and other add-on VNFs. Specific details can be found in EANTC’s report on the NIA Website.

“The test plan took into account references from the ETSI as well as the IETF and was rigorously reviewed by NIA service provider members. We were ultimately able to create eight test cases focused on two verticals: Network Service Orchestration and Service Function Chaining,” said Carsten Rossenhovel, managing director, EANTC. “It is no secret that network virtualization and service orchestration are still taking shape and face many interoperability challenges. ADTRAN solutions participated in this Interoperability Showcase with great success, confirming that ADTRAN is on the forefront of productizing an open, carrier-grade software-defined access solution.”

The scope of the test was focused on the interoperability of vCPE life-cycle management with orchestration functions and interoperability of the virtual network functions with the NFV infrastructure. Configurations tested that ADTRAN’s vCPE completed successfully include:

  • Point-to-Point Connectivity where two sites ran similar vCPE functions configured for an IPv4 connection.
  • Static Bandwidth Provisioning to show how a virtual infrastructure should handle shared resources, in the test case, bandwidth control and QoS.
  • Dynamic Bandwidth Provisioning to show how service providers can manage bandwidth on demand plans, in the test case, provisioning a dual bandwidth profile that starts with 10 Mbit/s and automatically extends to 20Mbit/s when bandwidth thresholds are exceeded. During this test, ADTRAN demonstrated a scripted configuration that enabled the vCPE configuration to change on the fly.

In addition, the NIA Showcase Interoperability tested Service Function Chaining to show how SDN/NFV change the dynamics of the traditional networking paradigm and simplify the deployment of network services at the customer premise. During the testing, ADTRAN’s vCPE successfully completed both testing scenarios: Static Forwarding Graph and Flow-Based Forwarding Graph.

“ADTRAN is committed to defining the future network for its carrier customers with open, scalable solutions and standards as they look to navigate today’s globally interconnected marketplace and best serve their business and residential customers,” said Chris Thompson, director, customer devices portfolio, ADTRAN. “Having the industry’s first viable vCPE solution validated as part of EANTC’s rigorous testing underscores our dedication to our customers to help them realize their vision of the software-defined access network.”