Page 28 - Annual-Report-201704

Networks

Fulfilling the Promise of
Unlimited Bandwidth

Today’s consumers expect
communications services to be easily
accessible and available everywhere,
on whatever devices they are using.
Technically, this means networks must
converge. We provide a comprehensive
set of standards for access network
technologies.

Network Functions Virtualisation Our Industry Specification Group (ISG) on NFV is creating
With Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV), standard specifications to enable network functions to be deployed
IT virtualisation technology is adapted to consolidate dynamically and on-demand, making organisations more
many network equipment types onto industry standard agile in addressing customer needs and the new challenges
high volume servers, switches and storage. This involves facing network technologies. The importance of this work is
implementing network functions in software which can demonstrated by the fact that membership of the group has
run on a range of industry-standard server hardware. grown from a small number of influential founders in 2012 to
This software can then be moved to, or introduced in, around 300 organisations.
various locations in the network as required. The use of
NFV simplifies the roll-out of network services, reduces In September 2016, the virtualisation of telecommunication
deployment and operational costs and encourages networks moved a significant step closer with the publication
innovation. The technology is being adopted increasingly of our second release of NFV specifications. Release 2
for network planning, deployment and evolution and has incorporates 11 new Group Specifications (GSs), in addition
become an essential element of modern network design. to the many NFV specifications already published, and
NFV promises to deliver significant benefits to service users includes our first normative specifications for NFV. Release 2
and providers alike, particularly in the area of emerging 5G details the various requirements, interface descriptions and
networks. information models which will enable the interoperability of
solutions based on the ETSI NFV Architectural Framework.
It also outlines the functional requirements in relation to
a wide set of functional areas, such as the management of
virtualised resources, the lifecycle management of network
services and virtualised network functions, network service
fault/performance management and virtualised resource
capacity management.

By the end of 2016, we had also defined the content of
Release 3, the main objectives of which are to provide
consistent operational integration with connectivity services,
to consolidate security mechanisms and to enable the
support of multi-domain scenarios suitable for potential new
business models. We extended the remit of ISG NFV for an
additional two years to enable it to continue its work.

In January, we convened a major industry information
modelling workshop in Louisville, USA, which, for the
first time, brought standards bodies and Open Source
communities together to accelerate the alignment of their
NFV activities. This workshop was the starting point for close
collaboration with external groups to ensure that information
models are aligned. A second workshop, held in Bonn,
Germany, in December 2016, demonstrated the level of
co-operation achieved so far.

The use of Proofs of Concept (PoC) demonstrations to
validate key concepts continued throughout 2016.

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