Open Network Hypervisor forSDN Network Virtualization

Service providers and mobile operators are facing many challenges due to the fast changing digital era. Customers are getting used to accessing their data any place, any time and anyway. Together with the cloud based services that move more and more information out of the customer’s LAN, everyone wants more broadband services. But while capacity demand is growing, customer expects that the connectivity prices will be kept the same if not reduced. Operators must adjust their network strategy and invest in technology to meet the continued expansion of network bandwidth consumption while ensuring superior user experiences.

Another major challenge for service providers and mobile operators is the increasing pace of innovation. Operators’ top revenue sources can be eroded by new competitive services in an instant. One example is the social messaging application “WhatsApp” which was introduced in 2010, gained huge popularity, impacting the network as well as eroding SMS revenues for operators. Operators are increasingly challenged to react to this fast-changing environment by deploying new revenue-generating services, however for some operators this can take too long. The average Time-To-Market (TTM) for new service introduction in the telecom industry is in months. Operators need to move their operations to agile, cloud-based architectures that enable to reduce the TTM of new services to weeks, instead of months.

Challenges Facing Service Providers and Mobile Operators

Source: www.wirelesshabitat.eu

Voice dominant

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To thrive, operators need new technologies and methodologies that help them deliver innovative customer services as required. Virtualization is a proven technology in the enterprise space allowing companies to gain significant benefits such as high availability for critical applications, streamlining application deployment Time-To-Market (TTM), simplifying IT operations and increasing agility to scale and respond faster to changing business demands. Virtualization is set to fundamentally change telecommunication networks, enabling operators to become nimble and rapidly deliver profitable services. Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Networks Functions Virtualization (NFV) are leading the service providers and mobile operators’ transformation from communications technology (CT) to information communications technology (ICT).NFV technology virtualizes networking functionalities and run those functionalities somewhere else in the network (usually in the Telco DC, but sometimes at the PoP / customer locations in a distributed manner). The main change in mindset is that these functionalities are implemented in software and are running on standard CPUs and not as dedicated appliances. NFV solution infrastructure is comprised out of the physical infrastructure (server, storage, DC networking) called Virtual Networking Function Infrastructure (VNFI), the different management and orchestration layers (MANO) as well as the different Virtual Networking Functions (VNF). NFV will allow a very agile and flexible service implementation empowered by cloud management and orchestration tools that will automate a lot of the operational work to minimize the OPEX and the new service deployment time. SDN technology on the other hand is a network evolution technology that separates the control plane from the data plane, and abstract the control plane into a centralized element called SDN controller. The SDN controller has a central view on the network can program the different data plane elements to run the different services. SDN architecture also separates the network control functionality from the specific service type functionality, implementing the first in the SDN controller and the second in SDN applications that are running on top of the SDN controller. SDN technology is providing a para virtualization solution towards the applications, however there is an element missing in order to fully virtualize SDN network. In this white paper, we will describe the missing element and highlight the benefits of adopting this new framework to evolve the network to a fully virtualized SDN network.

Current Trends:

Close Control Para Virtualized Network Fully Virtualized Network

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Open Network Hypervisor (OpenNH) is a new framework and architecture for SDN network virtualization. The solution supports operators with accelerating service deployment, providing innovative open networks, enhancing secure separation between tenants, and reducing operational costs. It provides full SDN networks virtualization and enables the mobile operators and service providers to complete the ICT transformation.OpenNH separates the physical and virtual networks, creating a "network hypervisor layer" that virtualizes the physical network, allowing for tenant isolation, increased operational speeds and efficiency, as well as traffic scheduling and customization for customers' quality of service needs. Similar to computer hypervisor, which virtualizes CPU/ Memory/ Disk, Open Network Hypervisor is a hypervisor layer that lies on top of the physical network and below the control layer, providing a unified API to the hosted SDN controllers on top and the network elements below.

Decupling the physical devices from the controller’s layer, enable slicing the network and running multiple parallel guest controllers per each slice. This capability supports full control on every slice to the guest controller thus providing all of the virtualization world benefits to the network. The ability to have the customer bring his own SDN controller enables a new business model that was not possible before as well as new operational methods to the operators. These new capabilities will empower the customers and enable them to implement their policies and control their virtual network slice in order to provide their services in the best optimized way.This capability will also enable mobile operators and service providers to share networks and investments, as this solution takes out the control and operational issues that were one of the strongest limiting factors in infrastructure sharing.

Open Network Hypervisor:

Network Hypervisor for SDN Virtualization

Open Network Hypervisor (OpenNH)

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Network sandboxing is one of the main benefits of the OpenNH. It allows operators to deploy different SDN Controllers while assuring full isolation between the different controllers. This sandboxing enables operators to host their customers SDN controllers and allows the customer to run their own applications on top of the customer SDN controller, without concerns.

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Sandboxing Your Network“Sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs. It typically provides a tightly controlled set of resources for guest programs to

run in. Sandboxes may be seen as a specific example of virtualization.”---Wikipedia

Operational simplicity

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5G networks are a clear use case for OpenNH. As 5G networks are designed to meet many types of services, in different industries and at different scales, there is a huge variance between the different service requirements. This create a huge technology challenge for the 5G networks as it needs these different requirements on a single technology network. To accommodate these variations 5G is designed with network slicing capabilities, high virtualization and SDN support. As a full SDN virtualization solution OpenNH addresses the network slicing challenge as it provides maximum flexibility, agility and independence between the different slices and can support multiple virtual topologies, transport technologies, routing algorithms etc., each optimized to serve its own use case and service.In many of the use cases, virtualizing just the core using vEPC (like shown in the below diagram) is just not enough as all of the vEPCs are directly connected to the same physical SDN network, and that limits the flexibility and agility of the different network slices.

If mobile operators want to gain the full benefits of network slicing they should deploy the Open Network Hypervisor, and then deploy a dedicated SDN controller with every new network slice. In this solution each vEPC instance is connected to its own SDN controller and can manage his virtual mobile network at will (as illustrated in the below diagram). The virtual operator (the customer) can fine tune his virtual network per service opening us the network to new revenue opportunity and new more cloud related business models.

5G Network Slicing With OpenNH

MVNO Deployment Today

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5G Networking Slicing With OpenNH

Summary:Open Network Hypervisor is an innovative framework for full SDN virtualization. It has many benefits such as faster new service introduction, innovation openness, easy customization, operational simplicity and enhanced security.We’ve also described how OpenNH is the only solution that fits the network slicing requirements of the 5G networks. It is not limited to the mobile use case, and has many other use cases in the service providers and data center provider’s scenarios.

Open Network Hypervisor

OpenNH is the next step in network virtualization journey.

· Faster new service introduction· Innovation openness· Easy customization· Enhanced security· Operational simplicity

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