Here's our weekly look at what's been going on in software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and related areas.

1. TMF gets into NFV

The TeleManagement Forum (TMF) wants in on the NFV proofs-of-concept game. In a joint meeting Monday, the TMF and ETSI industry specifications group (ISG) swapped notes (taking advantage of both groups having meetings this week in Silicon Valley), and the TMF came away with some ideas for demos relating to network management.

Proofs-of-concept were given a formal framework by the ISG in October, with the carriers in ETSI creating a PoC panel that's expected to give a report in the third quarter of 2014. The TMF has its own demo program called Catalyst that happens to have a December deadline approaching, so the hope is that some Catalyst projects can be polished into demos to show at Management World in June, said David Milham, the TMF's chief architect for service provider engagement, during a short talk at this week's TMF Digital Disruption conference.

Milham stressed the urgency of getting involved, because the carriers are advancing NFV with unusual speed. "The service providers, if they don't get what they want, will just go and do something," he said.

You can read about this in a lot more detail at Light Reading. And for more about the ETSI ISG's progress, check out the latest of Marc Cohn's NFV Insider's Perspective blogs.

2. Ixia Pays for More Visibility

Network monitoring is kind of coming into fashion. Endace was acquired by Emulex early this year, and Gigamon went public in June. Now, privately held Net Optics is getting acquired by Ixia for $190 million, as the companies announced this week. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

For the first nine months of 2013, Net Optics' revenues were $42 million, 21 percent higher than in the same period last year. Revenues for all of 2012 totaled $49 million.

3. Brocade Has an Idea for OpenStack

Brocade is proposing an extended blueprint for Openstack Neutron. Named the Dynamic Network Resource Management, it's going to be demonstrated and formally proposed at next week's OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong. You can find out more here.

4. Midokura Advances MidoNet

The network virtualization company announced version 2 of its MidoNet, which includes support for Layer 2 gateways. That makes Midokura's distributed functions aware of VLANs, allowing Midonet to bridge across hybrid environments — reaching into an enterprise's VMware environment and an OpenStack one, for instance. Midokura also announced support for the OpenStack Havana release, although that actually went live more than a week ago.

5. Pertino Opens Up Shop

Pertino has built an app store for its Cloud Network Engine, which launched in February. (Pertino's service essentially allows the creation of your own spontaneous network in the cloud; it's a company that developed SDN technology but uses it rather than sells it.) There's not much to the store yet; the hope is that software vendors will help Pertino stock the shelves, so to speak.

The two apps available for demo sound practical but not exactly radical. GeoView displays your network's users on a map, rather than just listing them as Pertino's normal UI does, and SafeSpot encrypts traffic when you're accessing the network from a suspect location such as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

6. Ciena's OTN Speedwagon Wins Battle of the Bands

Kinda speaks for itself. Don't miss the photos of the band.