6WIND Announces Speed Certification Program for a Scalable NFV Infrastructure Ecosystem

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- 6WIND, a high-performance networking software company, today announced its 6WIND Speed Certification Program, which is an ecosystem of software alternatives for high performance virtual networking. The program unites application vendors, Service Providers and Integrators to enable virtual networking and performance for their Network Function Virtualization (NFV) solutions with 6WIND Virtual Accelerator™. Deployed transparently in the hypervisor domain, 6WIND Virtual Accelerator is a software package that accelerates virtual networking infrastructure while reducing CPU resources necessary for packet processing so that more cores are available for applications.

According to Light Reading, "By the beginning of 2016, there should be no more good reason for using the 'passthrough' direct network hardware access method that breaks virtualization concepts."¹ 6WIND Speed Certification is awarded to Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) that are deployed as Virtual Machines (VMs) and benefit from standard virtual networking infrastructure without any additional hardware or techniques such as SR-IOV or PCI passthrough.

The following applications are now 6WIND Speed Certified to deliver increased performance leveraging 6WIND Virtual Accelerator with standard KVM hypervisors in a virtual environment.

• F5 BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM^®) Virtual Edition delivers 5x performance
• Ixia IxVM delivers 4x performance

"F5 is well positioned for emerging NFV use cases, as we allow Service Providers to address automation and agility service requirements by leveraging our market-leading application delivery and security software," said Dr. Mallik Tatipamula, VP, Service Provider and Cloud Solutions, F5 Networks. "Cooperative efforts with other software companies such as 6WIND help us expand our value proposition, add customer value, and further pursue NFV opportunities."

"Characterizing and benchmarking VNF performance and security is critical to the successful deployment of NFV," said Sunil Kalidindi, Vice President Product Management, at Ixia. "Combining Ixia's Virtual Edition (VE) test products with 6WIND's Virtual Accelerator gives our customers a very high performance solution to test and validate their VNFs' readiness for deployment."

6WIND Speed Certification Enables NFV across Value Chain:

• Application Vendors: Leverage existing virtual networking infrastructure to cost-effectively offer VNFs with the right level of performance
• Service Providers: Deploy VNFs from different vendors according to service requirements
• Integrators: Address VNF deployment and interoperability challenges for customers

Certification Benefits from 6WIND Virtual Accelerator:

• Efficiency: Optimized packet processing software offloads hardware resources to maximize VNF performance and support multiple VNFs on a single server
• Performance: VM-based application throughput approaches bare metal performance without additional hardware
• Simple VNF Integration: VNFs with any operating system benefit from hypervisor acceleration without any modification or recompilation
• Portability: Hardware independence with support for all market leading hardware NICs ensures VNFs are future-proofed to port seamlessly across systems
• Software Environment Compatibility: Works with all major Linux distributions, OpenStack and SDN Controllers/management
• Networking Feature Set: Supports Open vSwitch, Linux bridge and all Layer 2/3 features, including firewall and IPsec, as required by modern virtual infrastructure

"6WIND Speed Certification brings together an ecosystem of application vendors, Service Providers and Integrators that share a common goal to accelerate a cost-effective and flexible migration to NFV," said Eric Carmes, CEO and Founder of 6WIND. "The end result future proofs the transition with software applications that are certified for performance, interoperability and hardware independence, enabling the promise of NFV."

6WIND will demonstrate 5x performance for F5 BIG-IP LTM virtual edition and 4x performance for Ixia IxVM in an OpenStack NFV platform at the Carrier Network Virtualization event in Palo Alto, December 1 and 2, 2015.

For more information about the 6WIND Speed Certification Program visit: http://www.6wind.com/company-profile/partners/speed-certified-partner-program

About 6WIND

6WIND's commercial software solves performance challenges for network vendors in telecom, enterprise and cloud infrastructure markets. The company's 6WINDGate™ packet processing software is optimized for cost-effective hardware running Linux with a choice of multicore processors to deliver a wide variety of networking and security protocols and features. Based on 6WINDGate, 6WIND Virtual Accelerator™ provides accelerated virtual networking infrastructure and 6WIND Turbo Router™ and 6WIND Turbo IPsec™ are software appliances for bare metal or virtual machine environments. By solving critical data plane performance challenges on multicore architectures, 6WIND delivers a cost-effective value proposition, enabling the transition to the future with Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). 6WIND is based near Paris, France with regional offices in China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. For more information, visit http://www.6wind.com.

F5, BIG-IP, Local Traffic Manager, and LTM are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Company Contact:
Kelly LeBlanc
VP of Marketing for 6WIND
Phone: +1 (408) 508-6732
[email protected]

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¹ http://www.lightreading.com/nfv/nfv-tests-and-trials/validating-ciscos-nfv-infrastructure-pt-1/d/d-id/718684?page_number=10

SOURCE 6WIND

Related Links

http://6wind.com