• Vodafone's deployment uses Cisco’s Crosswork Hierarchical Controller as the overall management layer.
• Juniper provided its Paragon Pathfinder IP and MPLS SDN Controller while Ciena provided its Manage, Control, and Plan (MCP) Optical SDN Controller.
• Alessandra Pavese at Vodafone, said that the virtual SDN applications are deployed within the operator’s private cloud and that “changes to more than 620 multi-vendor network platforms can be achieved using software-driven commands.”

Vodafone recently completed a two-year-long project with vendor partners Cisco, Juniper, and Ciena in using newly developed open standards and interfaces to update SDN control of its wide-reaching optical transport network that will make it easier to provision and manage network services for the operator and customers.

The U.K.-based multi-country operator began the process in mid-2020 when it installed its first SDN area controller. It acted as the deployment and roadmap guide for those vendors to help steer the process.

Vodafone’s global transport network includes optical fiber cables that can support up to 250 terabytes of data traffic. These cables link its more than 270 third-party and self-owned data centers, enterprise and consumer customers, partner agreements, and its tens of thousands of mobile base stations across its mobile operations in Europe and Africa.

“Specifically, we applied the software to both the optical network, which converts data into light for transmission at very high speeds, and the [IP] network that securely allows computers and devices to connect to the internet,” Eva Rossi, head of transport product at Vodafone, noted in a blog post tied to the deployment.

A spokesperson for the operator explained that the update provides a “single pane of glass” giving it “unified insight to our global network, streamlining activities that were previously performed across multiple systems.” This also allows the operator to provide common transport network APIs to customers so they can manage the quality and performance of their overlay services.

“Services can be provisioned with a ‘click of a button’ across multi-vendor networks and end-to-end visibility enables colleagues to understand the multi-layer topology, performance, and complex mapping quickly and efficiently between layers creating a deeper understanding of services in a cost-efficient way,” the spokesperson added.

The deployment uses Cisco’s Crosswork Hierarchical Controller as the overall management layer. The vendor acquired this product last year when it bought Sedona Systems.

Juniper provided its Paragon Pathfinder IP and MPLS SDN Controller and Ciena provided its Manage, Control, and Plan (MCP) Optical SDN Controller.

Kevin Wollenweber, VP/GM for mass-scale infrastructure routing and automation at Cisco, explained in an interview with SDxCentral that the hierarchical controller basically sits on top of the domain-specific controllers to provide a unified view across the IP and optical networks.

“They want a single place to look across the network and very quickly and easily see in that single pane of glass the things like what's happening in the WAN and the optical layer, what's happening in the IP layer, and very quickly be able to diagnose faults within that infrastructure,” Wollenweber said.

Wollenweber added that this is becoming a growing area of interest for operators that want to remove complexity from their network management.

Tim Pearson, VP of product line management at Ciena, explained the vendor’s work focused on layer zero, where its controller acts as the physical layer domain controller. It then interacts with the Cisco controller to provide insight into network traffic conditions.

Alessandra Pavese, head of cloud and connectivity evolution and automation at Vodafone, explained that the virtual SDN applications are deployed within the operator’s private cloud and that “changes to more than 620 multi-vendor network platforms can be achieved using software-driven commands.”

Vodafone specifically cited “multi-vendor integration based on open and standard interfaces between different vendor SDN applications.”

Pearson noted that the project relied on the Open Networking Foundation’s Transport API (T-API) standard, which provides a layer-zero to layer-two interface for SDN controllers. He said this was significant in that it’s a fairly specific standard that helps minimize interpretation creep but still provides vendors with wiggle room.

“I don't think that necessarily any vendor was looking to create an environment where we couldn't be successful because these open interfaces, they're going to live well beyond this particular activity,” Pearson said. “So we want to make sure that as we evolve these open interfaces, they are suitable for lots of different applications and lots of different deployments down the road.”

Pearson added that Ciena worked mostly with Cisco on the integration process, which he said was “professional, guided by the standards, and ultimately you just make a decision and you move on. It's not an area where I think a high degree of competitive or commercial tension existed.”