AT&T’s network backbone is now, at least partially, running on disaggregated, core routing software from DriveNets, CTO Andre Fuetsch announced today at the Open Networking & Edge Summit.

The operator submitted specifications for a distributed disaggregated chassis (DCC) white box router to the Open Compute Project (OCP) exactly one year ago. Based on Broadcom’s Jericho2 system-on-a-chip (SoC), the corresponding software can “gracefully scale from four terrabits per second to 192 terrabits per second,” Fuetsch said. 

“We have now deployed a next generation IP MPLS core routing platform into our production network based on this open software,” he said. DriveNets, which Fuetsch described as a “disruptive supplier,” is providing the network operating system software for that core use case and a set of traffic engineering features for reliable and efficient MPLS transport, he explained. 

The entire stack of core routing hardware and software has been rewritten from scratch and provisioned as microservices and containers to handle myriad workloads for specific router functions, DriveNets CEO Ido Susan told SDxCentral in a phone interview.

“You find yourself with multi workloads sharing the same chip and simple database, but all the components of the software of the routing function are separated — database, control, and the management orchestration,” he said. The data plane and control plane are also disaggregated with data plane functions running on white box hardware and the control plane runctions running via software on x86 servers, he added. 

“You really simplify the network and in one box you’re able to run multiple services,” Susan said. Indeed, during his keynote, Fuetsch teased further announcements in the coming weeks with other software vendors that will provide other services on the same software. “This will truly demonstrate the power of openness,” Fuetsch said. 

DriveNets network operating system software is commercially deployed in AT&T’s network now, and “about two years from now, 100% of all the growth and legacy traffic is going to run on our technology. So it’s a huge cluster with many sites,” Susan said. 

Beyond the benefits of lower costs and simplified network architecture, Susan noted that DriveNets is motivated by different factors than traditional core router vendors. “Juniper and Cisco’s motivation is to sell maximum boxes. They get revenue per hardware or per box that they are selling you,” he said. “Our motivation is the opposite. We want to sell minimum boxes, meaning to increase the utilization of the network to maximum, and sell you more and more software.” 

Fuetsch framed the development around AT&T’s broader initiative to virtualize its network and fuel the rise of open source hardware and software in networks. “Having a much more software-centric network enables us to respond rapidly to any new demand on the network, even those caused by worldwide pandemics,” he said. 

Voice calls over WiFi is a service AT&T had fully virtualized prior to the COVID-19 with a virtualized evolved data packet gateway, functions running via OpenStack on AT&T’s network cloud, and the Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP) for orchestration and data analytics, according to Fuetsch. 

"I'm so thankful for the work we put into this platform before the pandemic because what we saw in the first few months of the COVID crisis is that WiFi calling peaked over 105% and averaged 90% higher than pre-COVID levels,” he said. The virtualization of that service allowed AT&T to add additional capacity within hours, compared to the weeks of work it would have required five years ago, according to Fuetsch. 

AT&T also managed a 16-times increase in demand on its global SD-WAN service during the first few months of the pandemic and “three years of text messaging growth in just one week,” he said, adding that AT&T’s prior work in virtualization allowed it to provision those services dynamically and quickly to meet the surge in demand. 

“Our AT&T network has been able to withstand the unprecedented new normal demands during COVID, thanks to the investments we’ve made,” Fuetsch said.