The Broadband Forum and ON.Lab have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on Central Office Re-architected as Data Center (CORD), advancing virtualization into the last mile network via SDN and NFV.
This agreement formalizes and extends the collaboration between Broadband Forum and ON.Lab which began during the build-up to the Forum's recent special meeting on broadband network evolution in Atlanta.
By establishing the MOU, the CORD Project community will be able to understand the requirements of next-generation broadband services at the Forum and demonstrate how these can be met with the CORD platform.
Ultimately, the CORD Project community's work will inform future Broadband Forum standards based on real-world open source implementations and speed up the time-to-market of solutions for providers and vendors.
CORD integrates NFV and SDN to bring data center economics and cloud flexibility to both the telco Central Office and the entire access network.
During the recent meeting, ON.Lab and Broadband Forum showed how CORD can enable an array of residential, enterprise and mobile applications as well as discussions around the business case of simplifying the economies of traditional data centers.
Cloud CO will use CORD, an open source reference implementation, as an input into the architecture definition process. Cloud CO use cases can also be tested onCORD, in order for CORD to evaluate their implementation.
Service providers like AT&T (NYSE: T) are already taking advantage of what CORD could do for its FTTH networks.
The service provider conducted a proof-of-concept (POC) transformation CORD last June and is proceeding with a set of lab and field trials this year.
During the initial proof of concept, AT&T tested a CORD solution that spanned the traditional central office access, including Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPON) and G.fast, as well as home/enterprise customer premises equipment (CPE). Part of this effort going forward will include a virtual OLT (vOLT), which is part of the disaggregation phase of AT&T's implementation of NFV.
AT&T told FierceTelecom that it is currently running a field trial in Georgia using an open vOLT application that runs as part of the ON.Lab CORD platform.
"We use this as a "real world" test environment where we can validate various open HW and VNFs needed to deliver access service," said John Donovan, AT&T's chief strategy officer and group president.
For more:
- see the release
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