Oct 17 2014
CALIENT Technologies, Inc., the global leader for optical circuit-switching technology, today announced a new plugin for the OpenDayLight (ODL) platform, giving data center architects flexibility in building software-defined networking (SDN)-controlled hybrid packet-optical networks using the company’s S-Series Optical Circuit Switches.
CALIENT is a pioneer of hybrid packet-optical networks that add an optical circuit switch to packet-based data center networks specifically to handle offloading of persistent data flows through express optical-layer paths.
The new OpenDayLight plugin will allow applications and external controllers using the ODL framework to control CALIENT’s S-Series switches via standard published OpenDayLight REST APIs, thus simplifying deployment in software defined data center networks.
“OpenDayLight provides a very flexible software framework for controlling hybrid packet-optical networks and so it makes sense for CALIENT to pioneer the development of plugin functionality to support optical circuit switches,” said Jitender Miglani, Vice President of Engineering for CALIENT. “CALIENT intends to contribute this and future plugins to the open-source community to help harness the power of SDN in data center and metro networks.”
In a future release, CALIENT will add a circuit manager to OpenDayLight. Circuit manager is a service with northbound REST APIs that interfaces with external orchestration engines/controllers that may want to manage CALIENT’s S-Series switch as part of their native application.
Building on Existing SDN Support
The ODL plugin builds on CALIENT’s existing support for the OpenFlow API by extending the OpenFlow protocol to support circuit switching through the “Extensions to the OpenFlow Protocol in support of Circuit Switches,” adhering to the guidelines in “Addendum to OpenFlow Protocol Specification (v1.0) – Circuit Switch Addendum v0.3 extensions.”
The plugin works with the “Hydrogen” release of OpenDayLight and will be upgraded to support the upcoming “Helium” Release. Later this quarter, CALIENT will provide support for OpenFlow v1.3 and v1.4 on its S-Series optical switches. At the same time a corresponding OpenDayLight plugin will be offered as part of the company’s commitment to contribute to the open-source community.
CALIENT had earlier announced OpenFlow (with circuit switching extensions) capabilities on its S-Series optical circuit switches. It had also announced extensions to the Floodlite open-source-controller.
Availability
The new OpenDayLight software plugin is available now. For more information please contact [email protected].
Source: http://www.calient.net/