History of SDN Control at AT&T

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Arnold Brent Weaver
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1 History of SDN Control at AT&T Chris Rice Senior Vice-President, AT&T Labs

2 Definition of SDN and an SDN Controller Software-Defined Networking - (SDN) is an architectural approach to network design that uses open protocols and provides programmability to network elements, allowing them to be more dynamic, manageable, and adaptable. SDN controller - a long-running application in SDN that provides flow management and enables intelligent networking, allowing network elements to know where to send packets, providing a framework for VNF management, and enabling software control of the optical / wavelength layer.

3 SDN Controllers Historical View TDM NCP Network Control Point IP IRSCP SDN-C Intelligent Route Service Control Point RouterFarm Software Defined Networking-Controller APP-C Application-Controller Open ROADM Reconfigurable Add Drop Multiplexer

4 RouterFarm Historical View Motivation: Removing static relationship between customers and network Applications: Detect and Correct Failures Planned maintenance Bulk customer migrations Load balancing Prototyped RouterFarm Controller (RFC) Basis of bulk EoL Router migration ( ) BR PoP CE CE CE CE BR working down backup Edge router Edge router Cross Over Edge router

5 Early IP SDN Control 2004 AT&T implemented one of the first versions of IRSCP at scale in our network. Service Orchestrator Separation of Service from Network from Device Key Learnings: Proper Modeling critical Signaling isn t enough Need configuration, resource management, analytics

6 SDN & the Network Cloud Next-gen carrier grade networks must: Be Cloud-based Be Model-driven Be Software-defined ECOMP was born L2/L3 network controllers L4/L7 VNF Management / application controllers Pushed to layer to L0/L1 controllers

7 ECOMP E Services BSS / OSS Big Data ECOMP Portal Design Functions Operational Functions Dashboard OA&M Operation Administration & Maintenance External Data Movement & APIs A&AIG Active & Available Inventory MSOs Master Service Orchestrator Common Services, Data Movement, Access Control & APIs Recipe/Engineering Rules & Policy Distribution AT&T Service Design & Creation DCAEd Data Collections & Analytics Controllers Engineering Rules & Inventory Policy Creation Analytic Application Design ECOMP Controller Storage Compute Networking VNFs / Applications

SDN Controller Framework XML YANG YANG Security Apps Security Apps Security Apps Directed Graph Network Data Service related artifacts Service Data OpenDaylight with AT&T

8 SDN Controller Framework XML YANG YANG Security Apps Security Apps Security Apps Directed Graph Network Data Service related artifacts Service Data OpenDaylight with AT&T customizations API Handlers Service Logic Interpreter Config Tree Operational Tree SDN-C SDN-C Database External API calls A&AI Inventory Network Adaptors OpenStack VoIP VNF VRR vce/vpe BGPCEP

9 SDN-Controller Major Components Northbound API Handler (parses API calls) The Directed Graphs Service Logic Interface Config Node last node in the DG

10 Node Red Directed Graph Development Tool Tooling to make service creation easier on an SDN Controller Move service designers to drag and drop GUI s Generate Models in ASDC Execute SDN-C designs

11 Application Controller (APP-C) > Implementation Scope APP-C performs functions to manage the lifecycle of Virtual Functions Abstracts cloud/vf interfaces for repeatable actions Vendor agnostic mechanisms Enables automation Typical Application Controller Actions (APIs) SoftwareUpload Start Stop Rebuild Restart Terminate Migrate ActionStatus Evacuate Healthcheck Install Reconfigure Rollback Audit BlockAudits Sync VNFLock LiveUpgrade Query Test Scale Configure ConfigModify ConfigErase ConfigSave ConfigSetBaseline Initialize And Configure Applications During Deployment Automate Component Lifecycle Management Functions Monitor and Correct For Failures In Application Components

12 L0 SDN Controllers for Metro Packet-Optical Network Multi-Layer AT&T SDN Controller Federated L0 SDN Controller(s) API API API Packet Box Pluggable optics MW ROADM Vendor A MW MW ROADM Vendor B MW MW ROADM Vendor C MW Pluggable optics Packet Box Transponder W W W Transponder Key Takeaways: Open Disaggregated Interoperable Optical Layer, Standards-based API from each component to SDN Controller

13 Why OpenDaylight? Controllers are platforms for innovation, Innovation in Network and Service Design We need programmable controllers like OpenDaylight with rich set of north/south and east/west interface capabilities We as an industry need to keep working on reliability and scale (especially Geo- Redundancy)

Integrating External Controllers with ONAP. AT&T Labs

Integrating External Controllers with ONAP AT&T Labs Motivation Some service providers may want to leverage an alternative to an ONAP out of the box Controller (e.g., SDNC, GenNFC) for some subset of Resources.