News

OpenDaylight SDN Controller Marks 6 Years with 10th Release, Neon

• By David Ramel
• 04/01/2019

OpenDaylight, said to be the most pervasive open source software-defined networking (SDN) controller in the industry, is out in its 10th release as it celebrates its six-year anniversary.

Dubbed Neon, the controller is the centerpiece of the open and modular platform that helps organizations customize and automate their networks, leading the charge of the disruptive software-centric movement that favors open, decoupled, non-proprietary, programmable software over hardware-based systems.

SDN controllers fit into that picture by managing network flow control to boost network management capabilities, provide agility for changing conditions and improve the performance of applications and workloads.

The software-first movement has spawned a new networking ecosystem with which Neon integrates and collaborates, including downstream projects such as OpenStack (Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud computing), Kubernetes (container orchestration), OPNFV (network functions virtualization) and ONAP (networking automation).

In marking its sixth year, the project also listed these highlights:

• Scope, diversity and deployments: OpenDaylight has delivered 10 releases with the help of more than 1,000 authors and submitters who contributed more than 100,000 commits across dozens of organizations. Additionally, ODL-based solutions help power more than 1 billion global network subscribers.
• Support from top vendors, end users: Over time, ODL community contributions have moved from a select group of initial creators to a diverse set of global users and vendors, all building and leveraging solutions based on ODL today.

The new Neon release, meanwhile, includes updated features across use cases such as optical transport networking, WAN connectivity and routing, along with virtual networking in cloud and edge environments.

"Neon also features new stability and scalability enhancements, and cements the project's leadership in working with other open source communities to expedite next-generation networking solutions," the project said, specifically listing:

• Cloud/edge network virtualization features have been hardened with the Neon release to further enhance the suitability of OpenDaylight in production networks.
• Optical transport infrastructure control, now offers new features that ensure interoperability with higher level controllers using an open northbound API.
• WAN connectivity. Building on Fluorine's mature BGP stack, Neon brings enhancements that improve error reporting, restarts and network stability.
• Improved Stability and Reliability. Neon includes improvements in stability and scale, in addition to functional enhancements and bug fixes. OpenDaylight continues to undergo infrastructure enhancements making it easier for vendors and downstream open source projects to rapidly put-together and deploy OpenDaylight-dependent products and platforms.

Originally debuting as the first networking project under the direction of The Linux Foundation, the project is now guided by LF Networking, tasked with increasing harmonization of OpenDaylight and six other projects -- including ONAP and OPNFV -- across platforms, communities and ecosystems.