News

New Ciena Portfolio Includes OpenDaylight-Based SDN Controller, Apps

Aimed at WAN management, controller comes with applications for navigation, protection and optimization.

• By David Ramel
• 07/15/2014

Ciena Corp. unveiled a software portfolio featuring a multilayer software-defined networking (SDN) controller and associated applications.

The Agility software is based on the open source OpenDaylight framework and is specifically tailored for WAN scenarios.

According to Ciena, the new offering "enables the delivery of virtualized, on-demand network services and functions. It leverages advanced, real-time analytics to help network operators provision multi-vendor networks, ensure maximum efficiency and resiliency, and rapidly create and deploy new, differentiated virtualized services at lower cost."

The Multilayer WAN Controller "delivers an open, modular architecture which eliminates the prospect of vendor lock-in, enabling network operators to source network applications from Ciena, third parties and their own IT staff," said company exec Chris Janz in a blog post last week. "The use of the OpenDaylight framework, with its multiple open southbound interfaces and available southbound 'plug-in' interface methodology also opens the door to broad, multi-vendor network control."

Shipping with the controller are three new applications: Navigate, Protect and Optimize.

Navigate determines the best route to establish a network connection via a multilayer path computation engine that uses a total view of network resources and service demands along with an analytics algorithm.

Protect mitigates the risk of any failures by using a centralized global restoration calculator that will provide restoration paths for distributed execution in the event of a problem.

Optimize frees up stranded bandwidth by defragmenting a network and reallocating raw capacity, while fine-tuning connection routing.

Also new is a version of the company's V-WAN application that is compatible with the OpenDaylight framework. V-WAN is a performance-on-demand brokering and scheduling application for network resources. Recently selected for use by Equinix Inc. for its interconnection solution, V-WAN is available now, while the remaining components of the portfolio are entering field trials with various service providers.

"Demands for greater service agility and efficiency are driving network operators to look for ways to remove network cost and complexity," the company quoted 451 Research analyst Eric Hanselman as saying. "An open platform that virtualizes network resources and provides software-defined control, like Ciena's Agility software portfolio, can provide operators with an extensible foundation on which to build revenue-generating on-demand cloud and network functions."

Hanselman and Janz will take part in a webinar on Thursday, July 17, to discuss the new portfolio.