ETSI drives NFV interoperability with first “Plugtests” event at 5TONIC, Madrid

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ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, launches this week the first Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) interoperability Plugtests event. This international event, which takes place until 3 February in Leganes, Madrid, Spain, is hosted by 5TONIC Laboratory, with the technical support of Telefonica and IMDEA Networks Institute. This significant event comes hot on the heels of the publication of the ETSI NFV Release 2 specifications and the announcement of ETSI Open Source MANO Release ONE in October 2016.

This first NFV Plugtests event is ambitious. A pre-testing and remote integration phase was already launched in November 2016. In that, 29 remote labs were connected to the ETSI Plugtests network to verify interconnection between the different Virtualized Network Functions, Management and Orchestration solutions and NFV platforms participating in the Plugtests. During the two-week intense testing phase, interoperability tests will focus on validating ETSI NFV Release 2 end-to-end capabilities including management of descriptors and software images, as well as life cycle management of network services and virtual network functions.

The test plan development has been driven by ETSI’s Center for Testing and Interoperability, building on the methodology defined by the ETSI NFV testing working group. The overall results and lessons learnt will be fed back to ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group.

Over 40 commercial and open source implementations will be tested for interoperability, including 20 virtual network functions, 10 management and orchestration solutions and 10 NFV platforms. Over 140 people have prepared this two week event, forming an engaged and diverse community. Key NFV Open Source projects, ETSI OSM, Open Baton, OPEN-O and OPNFV, will also participate. This first ETSI NFV Plugtests is a unique opportunity to stimulate synergy and alignment across the NFV ecosystem.

The list of participants at this event includes: A10 Networks, Adva Optical Networking, Anritsu, Canonical USA, Cisco Systems, EANTC, Ericsson, F5 Networks, Fortinet, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Italtel, Ixia, Keynetic Technologies, Lenovo, Mahindra Comviva, Netrounds, Openet, Palo Alto Networks, Radware, Red Hat, RIFT.io, Sandvine, Sonus Networks, Spirent, University of the Basque Country, VMware and Wind River.

More information is available at: www.networks.imdea.org