The Linux Foundation's Nephio project hit a major milestone this week with its release 2 (R2) update. Nephio R2 builds upon the success of R1 with additional automation capabilities. While R1 provided the core automation foundations, Nephio R2 advances network automation with a focus on radio access network (RAN) and multicloud frameworks.

Nephio is an open-source project that is creating a telco industry–focused approach to cloud-native network automation. The project got started back in 2022 with the support of Google Cloud and had its first major release (R1) in August 2023.

Nephio now also benefits from the contributions of multiple organizations, with the R2 milestone receiving code contributions from 61 different companies.

“Cloud-native technologies, coupled with time-tested core principles like intent-driven automation, scalability, a unified framework and extensibility, are essential for telecom's success,” Arpit Joshipura, GM of networking, edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation, told SDxCentral. “These core principles offer the flexibility, agility and automation that traditional networks lack.”

Joshipura noted that Nephio R2 benefits from some significant collaboration from the OpenAirInterface (OAI) community.

OAI develops the reference implementations for the specs developed in the O-Ran specifications group in coordination with O-RAN Software Community (SC). In Nephio R2, Joshipura said that there is now full RAN use case support that goes beyond R1's packet core focus.

The additions include RAN network functions from OAI enabling design, deployment and end-to-end testing of different use cases.

Another area of improvement highlighted by Joshipura is R2's enhanced multivendor onboarding capabilities.

He explained that Nephio R2 streamlines network function deployment with extensible Kubernetes (K8s) custom resource definitions (CRDs), allowing customization for vendor-specific needs.

Nephio R2 can now also deploy and automate functions in the Google K8 Environment (GKE), Red Hat OpenShift, VMware and OpenStack environments. He noted that basic support is in R2 and this feature will be further enhanced in R3 to make it more comprehensive.

Being able to more easily customize and extend Nephio is a core goal for the project. That's where the new Nephio software development kit (SDK) fits in as an experimental feature in the R2 milestone.

The Nephio SDK provides developers, vendors and users with the tools necessary to streamline interactions with the Nephio automation platform and quickly write K8 operators.

“The primary goal of the Nephio SDK is to ease the onboarding of CNFs (cloud-native network functions) onto the Nephio platform,” Joshipura said.

He explained that the SDK includes K8 CRDs and libraries specifically designed to enable K8 Resource Model (KRM) functions. These tools empower developers to seamlessly write automation functions for the deployment and management of complex distributed workloads, such as those found in 5G network functions, within a K8 environment.

“The simplification provided by the SDK is essential for the efficient and effective management of the underlying infrastructure that these demanding workloads depend on,” he said.