The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is continuing to drive the support of software-defined networking (SDN) platforms with the release of the latest OpenFlow testing spec as well as the addition of a new testing facility in South Korea.

The ONF says the OpenFlow 1.3 testing specification, announced Tuesday, “includes features critical to the development of richly functional SDN products and services.” The conformance spec allows companies to make sure that the mandatory components of the standard’s protocol are included in their OpenFlow-based products, including hardware switches.

Companies can test their products for OpenFlow conformance at any of the ONF's approved testing labs. The newest such facility, hosted by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) in South Korea, is the ONF's seventh.

The other six testing facilities' locations are: the Beijing Internet Institute and China Telecommunication Technology Labs; Criterion Network Labs in Bangalore; the Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education at Indiana University; the Network Benchmarking Lab of National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan; and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab.

In November, the ONF opened its OpenFlow Conformance Testing Program to non-members in order to boost the buildout of the SDN ecosystem. The ONF Certificate of Conformance program is designed to ensure vendors’ products are OpenFlow-compliant while also increasing interoperability with other network architecture programs.  The vendors earn certification for their networking hardware and software, and those that pass will see their products listed on the ONF web site.