SNAPS is an overarching program at CableLabs to facilitate the adoption of software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) within the CableLabs’ community. The organization says it spearheaded SNAPS to fill in gaps within open source to ease the adoption of SDN and NFV for its cable members.

CableLabs hinted in October that it was planning to launch an open source group. At that time, we speculated that the open source project would be related to its SNAPS initiative. SNAPS stands for “SDN/NFV Application development Platform and Stack.” CableLabs had previously done some software development it called SNAPS-OO. It gave that code to the OPNFV project a couple of months ago.

This week CableLabs announced two new open source projects: SNAPS-Boot and SNAPS-OpenStack installer. The software was developed by CableLabs and the consulting firm Aricent.

“We hired [Aricent] to work with us to generate the source code,” said Randy Levensalor, CableLabs lead architect. “We invite other members to participate.”

SNAPS-Boot is designed to prepare a network operator’s servers for OpenStack. “With a single command, you can install Linux on your servers and prepare them for your OpenStack installation using IPMI, PXE and other standard technologies to automate the installation,” writes Levensalor in a blog posting.

The SNAPS-OpenStack installer will bring up OpenStack on running servers. It's based on the OpenStack Pike release. SNAPS uses a containerized version of OpenStack, built and tested by the OpenStack Kolla project.

Levensalor said these two projects may follow a similar trajectory as SNAPS-OO where CableLabs identifies a need, develops the code, builds some community around it, and then gives the code to another open source project, if appropriate. “It’s a model we established with SNAPS-OO,” he said, adding that potential receivers of SNAPS-Boot and SNAPS-OpenStack installer might be OPNFV or the OpenStack Foundation.

Although CableLabs focuses much of its work on things that benefit its cable members, Levensalor said, “Cable companies are our primary audience, but it could be used by a telco or anyone interested in NFV, including vendors.