At SDN & OpenFlow World Congress this week BTI Systems demonstrated how it has opened up its BTI 7800 optical platform to third party software so service providers can virtualize more functions of their central offices.

The 7800 is an ATCA chassis in which BTI supports its own packet optical blade, but can also house COTS compute and x86 processors, running carrier-grade Linux.

The BTI 7800 Virtual Network Edge integrates BTI’s optical transport platform with a network functions virtualization (NFV) applications plane and includes a common non-blocking switch fabric, along with power and cooling. It supports open management interfaces (Netconf/YANG, RESTful APIs and OpenFlow), providing flexible hosting of BTI or third-party virtual network functions (VNFs).

“Another element is all of this is being controlled by an external controller — OpenDaylight, also managing our optical layer and packet layer, and Layers 4-7,” says Sally Bament, BTI’s senior VP of global marketing.

At the show, BTI conducted a proof of concept (PoC) with Active Broadband Networks where Active Broadband’s virtual network gateway software was hosted on the BTI 7800 Series Applications Blade to aggregate broadband access traffic at the network edge. The demonstration also showed the NFV capabilities integrated in the platform, being controlled and managed from an OpenDaylight SDN controller.

Bament says of the PoC, “The access network is DSL provided by Active Broadband. What we’re doing is virtualizing that function that used to sit in the central office.”