Years ago, alarm monitoring and fault management were difficult across multivendor platforms. These tasks became significantly easier—and ubiquitous—after the introduction of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Management Information Base (MIB-II).
Similarly, multivendor network provisioning and equipment management has proved elusive. The reason is the complexity and variability of provisioning and management commands in equipment from multiple vendors.
Could a new protocol and data modeling language again provide the solution?
Absolutely. Over time, NETCONF and YANG will do for service provisioning what SNMP and MIB-II did for alarm management.
Recently, software-defined networking (SDN) has introduced IT and data center architectural concepts to network operators—that is, by separating the control plane and the forwarding plane in network devices, allowing their control from a central location. Innovative disaggregated hardware leverages this new SDN paradigm with centralized control and the use of YANG, a data modeling language and application program interface (API).
YANG offers an open model that, when coupled with the benefit of standard interfaces such as NETCONF and REST, finally supports multivendor management. This approach provides an efficient mechanism to overcome the complexity and idiosyncrasies inherent in each vendor’s implementation.
Fujitsu’s response to this evolution is the 1FINITY™ platform, a revolutionary disaggregated networking solution. Rather than creating a multifunction converged platform, each 1FINITY function resides in a 1RU blade: transponder/muxponder blades, lambda DWDM blades, and switching blades. Each blade delivers a single function that previously resided in a converged architecture—the result is scalability and pay-as-you-grow flexibility.
Each 1FINITY blade has an open API and supports NETCONF and YANG, paving the way for a network fully rooted in the new SDN and YANG paradigm. New 1FINITY blades are easy to program via an open, interoperable controller, such as Fujitsu Virtuora® NC. Since each blade has a YANG model, it’s easy to include provisioning and management in a networkwide element management function.
Any open-source SDN controller that enables multivendor and multilayer awareness of the virtual network will revolutionize network management and control systems. Awareness of different layers and different vendor platforms will result in faster time to revenue, greater customer satisfaction, increased network optimization, and new services that are easier to implement.