6WIND Announces Membership in CloudNFV Initiative
PARIS, August 14, 2013 — 6WIND, the gold standard for data plane processing in software- defined networks, today announced that it is a founding member of the CloudNFV initiative. CloudNFV is a group of vendors dedicated to creating a technical framework and demonstration platform for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) based on cloud computing and Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies in a multi-vendor environment. Tom Nolle, CIMI Corporation President, is the architect and facilitator of CloudNFV and, in addition to 6WIND, the other founding members include Dell, EnterpriseWeb, Overture and Qosmos. These six companies each bring unique technologies and expertise to complete the framework needed to demonstrate the multi-vendor CloudNFV vision.
NFV has emerged as a key approach to maximize network resource utilization by virtualizing functions traditionally implemented in dedicated hardware, thereby minimizing both CAPEX and OPEX. Service providers are increasingly exploring SDN-based network architectures in order to improve network manageability and accelerate the deployment of new services.
The objective of CloudNFV is to structure software and hardware elements, select practical interfaces and data models, and adapt as needed through the evolution of the ETSI NFV ISG specification. Detailed information on the technical framework and the initial prototype is contained within the white paper available via the CloudNFV website.
The data plane performance optimization delivered by 6WIND’s software ensures that CloudNFV deployments are cost-effective when compared with traditional physical equipment. Within the NFV architecture, there are two main applications where data plane processing, running on a standard server platform, represents a potential bottleneck. The first is the virtual switch, which must provide sustained, aggregated high-bandwidth network traffic to Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) running in Virtual Machines (VMs), while also maximizing the
performance of secure VM-to-VM communications. The second application is the VNFs themselves, which must deliver networking performance that is comparable to that achieved by equivalent physical implementations.
Standard open-source software solutions, such as the Open Virtual Switch (OVS) and the Linux kernel networking stack, do not deliver the level performance or scalability required to address these data plane bottlenecks. 6WIND’s networking software solves these problems through an innovative architecture that typically delivers a 10x performance acceleration for the standard open-source solutions, while that performance scales linearly with the number of processor cores configured to run the data plane. 6WINDGate™ delivers these benefits while retaining full compatibility with the standard OVS software and standard Linux distributions, so that neither OVS nor the VNF applications need to be changed.
“Our participation in CloudNFV is another example of our commitment to provide industry- leading solutions for the critical performance challenges in SDN and NFV, building on our membership of the Open Networking Foundation and the ETSI NFV ISG,” said Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND. “The 6WINDGate networking software has already been adopted by many tier-one Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) for physical equipment and it’s now deployed in service provider networks worldwide. Thanks to enhancements we have developed to address bottlenecks in virtualized networking environments, 6WINDGate is the ideal solution for the data plane performance challenges faced by CloudNFV.”
“The success of Network Functions Virtualization or the virtualization of switches or routers using SDN is totally dependent on the data-path performance of the VMs used to host the functions. The performance of the data path can make or break the business case for any network-virtual applications,” said Tom Nolle, President of CIMI Corporation and the architect and facilitator of CloudNFV. “6WIND is the industry leader in data path acceleration, and also the first vendor to step forward with an NFV mission statement. There’s nobody with better credentials to optimize density and performance for CloudNFV.”
The 6WINDGate solutions for virtual switch acceleration and VNF acceleration are available now.
For more information on 6WIND, please visit http://www.6wind.com. For more information on CloudNFV, please visit http://www.cloudNFV.com.