MENLO PARK, Calif., April 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- ONOS' community today announced the availability of the second release of its open source SDN Open Network Operating System (ONOS), named Blackbird, that is focused on performance, scale and high availability. ONOS is the first open source platform to define a comprehensive set of metrics for effectively evaluating the "carrier-grade quotient" of SDN control plane platforms/controllers and to publicly publish the performance evaluation of its Blackbird release using these metrics.

ONOS is architected as a distributed but logically centralized control plane to achieve high performance, scale-out and high availability. ONOS' high availability characteristics include full recovery from events such as switch and link failure, node failure, entire ONOS cluster failure, single node cluster failure, cluster partitioning and device-node communication failure.

"As service providers start deploying SDN solutions not only in their labs but also to control and manage their carrier-scale networks, high performance, scalability and resilience become key architectural requirements for these solutions," said Prajakta Joshi, Director of Products for the ONOS Project. "Carrier-grade SDN platforms and solutions need to demonstrate these attributes and measure and qualify them with effective metrics."

The Blackbird release also addresses the challenge of effectively determining "the carrier-grade quotient" of the SDN control plane. Metrics currently used to measure performance, including simplistic ones such as "Cbench," do not provide a complete or accurate view of the SDN control plane capabilities thereby highlighting the need for a more indicative set of measurements.

The ONOS Blackbird release defines the following set of metrics to effectively measure performance and other carrier-grade attributes of the SDN control plane—

Performance Metrics:

• Topology – link change latency   
• Topology – switch change latency
• Flow operations throughput
• Intent (Northbound) install latency
• Intent (Northbound) withdraw latency
• Intent (Northbound) reroute latency
• Intent (Northbound) throughput

Scalability

• Ability to scale control plane by adding capacity

High Availability

• Uninterrupted operation in the wake of failures, maintenance and upgrades

ONOS aims to achieve extremely high target numbers of 1,000,000 flow operations per second and less than 100 ms (and ideally under 10 ms) latency. Most of ONOS Blackbird release's measurements meet these targets; the ones that do not will continue to be optimized in the coming releases and in conjunction with use case and deployment requirements.

A comprehensive explanation of these metrics and Blackbird performance assessment using these metrics is published on the ONOS wiki at http://bit.ly/1GhIr3X.

"Achieving the high availability required to deliver network resilience at the necessary scale without compromising performance as you add controller instances has been an elusive goal for open source SDN solutions and a barrier to adoption—until now," said Guru Parulkar, Executive Director for ON.Lab. "Architected as a distributed system, ONOS is the first open source SDN solution to achieve linear scale-out while maintaining high performance and availability. As the size of your network grows, ONOS instances can be added to scale the SDN control plane, and seamlessly deliver the needed throughput. This ability not only breaks down barriers to real-world deployment but also future-proofs your network."

ONOS was open sourced on Dec 5th, 2014. ONOS' ecosystem comprises of ON.Lab and organizations that are funding and contributing to the ONOS initiative. These include AT&T, NTT Communications, SK Telecom, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei, Intel and NEC; members who are collaborating and contributing to ONOS include ONF, Infoblox, SRI, Internet2, Happiest Minds, KISTI, KAIST, Kreonet, CNIT, Black Duck, Create-Net and the broader ONOS community. Learn how you can get involved with ONOS at onosproject.org. 

About ON.Lab

Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) is a non-profit organization founded by SDN inventors and leaders from Stanford University and UC Berkeley to foster an open source community for developing tools and platforms to realize the full potential of SDN. ON.Lab brings innovative ideas from leading edge research and delivers high quality open source platforms on which members of its ecosystem and the industry can build real products and solutions. For further information on ON.Lab, visit http://onlab.us/.

Press Contact
Bob Eastwood, Engage PR for ON.Lab, 510-748-8200 x215, beastwood@engagepr.com

ON.Lab & ONOS Contact
Ram Appalaraju, Strategic Advisor for ON.Lab, ram@onlab.us

SOURCE ON.Lab

Related Links

http://www.onlab.us