Key steps for telecom network Cloud computing

The days of telecom network operators are getting worse and worse, because the flood of data is getting worse and worse, and the traditional network infrastructure is even more stretched. The simple mathematical principle tells us that the demand for data transmission bandwidth capacity is increasing exponentially, and the increase in the number of devices and performance that meet this demand cannot achieve linear growth, however, the procurement and operation costs of network equipment are increasing.

It seems that telecom operators can only hope for a miracle. Fortunately, humans can always create miracles. For telecom operators, virtualization is one of the most anticipated miracles.

Miracle created by Virtualization

The miracle of Virtualization has already created satisfactory benefits in the IT field. Virtualization technology is used to centralize the originally scattered servers for unified management and allocation, which improves the utilization of computing capacity, storage capacity, and other resources, thereby reducing management, maintenance, and operation costs. The benefits of cloud computing are brought out in this way.

With virtualization, cloud computing brings revolutionary and miraculous benefits to the IT field. The theoretical basis for generating such a special benefit is that users do not need to know or care about where the data is stored, where it is processed and used, instead, the management and scheduling center manages and uses computing and storage resources according to the optimal method. In such an IT environment, both hardware and software upgrades do not disturb or affect user use. This miracle was created mainly because of hardware standardization and software technology advances.

Telecom operators have long been aware of the benefits brought by Virtualization in the IT field, but IT is difficult to introduce IT into network communication equipment, and IT is difficult to serve telecom services. The obstacle during this process is that IT is difficult for Virtualization Technologies widely used in the IT field to achieve a normal running time of 99.9999%, that is, the availability is not high enough. The assessment criteria of telecommunications companies are actually very simple-although the equipment implemented by software and virtualization technology is good, to enter the telecommunications network, it must achieve the same fast performance as pure hardware equipment.

Exceeds the barrier of availability and performance

The performance indicators of the Next Generation Telecom network equipment are mainly in three aspects:

The first is the interrupt response latency.

Second, if virtualization technology is adopted, Context Switching speed between virtual network devices

Third, throughput rate

Network nodes that do not use virtualization technology usually consist of a Control Plane and multiple data planes.

If the performance indicators of the above three aspects are comparable to those of the network nodes that do not use the virtualization technology, then telecom operators should be impatient to adopt them, because the benefits of virtualization are too great!

In fact, the availability and performance of network nodes using virtualization technology cannot meet the requirements of telecom operators, which is not a new challenge in the industry. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to make breakthroughs.

Earlier this year, the results of a demonstration conducted by Feng He and Intel were eye-catching. In this demonstration project, LTE base stations using virtualization technology achieve the same performance as traditional existing base stations without virtualization technology, in addition, the hardware environment uses blade servers that can be purchased from the market to run the Linux kernel. The mysteries of this demo system are actually very simple-the Wind River software virtualizes Intel Xeon multi-core processors.

Wind River works closely with Intel and leading enterprises in the network communication industry to listen to the voice of the industry and make full use of the core capabilities of Wind River to optimize software for specific hardware, the Application of virtualization technology has reached a new realm. Wind River believes that software optimization for specific hardware is rooted in its own DNA. This demonstration directly gave birth to the latest Fenghe product Open Virtualization alization Profile.

OVP's mysteries

Wind River Open Virtualization alization Profile provides an optimized Preemptible (preemption) KVM for network infrastructure device manufacturers, quick context switching can be achieved between different virtual machines (the average latency of interrupt response from the customer's OS is less than 3 milliseconds), which also includes an optimized virtual crossover switch, fast packet transmission can be achieved between customers. All of these benefits from the entire system and Intel®Data Plane Development Kit is tightly integrated.

With Wind River Open Virtualization alization Profile, network device manufacturers can build high-performance virtual nodes to centrally replace features of multiple legacy physical devices with standardized intel blade servers. Furthermore, users can perform Network Functions Virtualization (NFC ).

Once the network functions are virtualized, they enter the cloud computing realm. They can be flexibly planned, deployed, and coordinated through the Central Intelligent Management Center, for example, unified scheduling across the world, enable network functions to run in the most urgent places to ensure performance, or to run in the most cost-effective place. With such features and ideas, cloud computing is no longer a "Never quenching thirst" for telecom networks, but a "first month of near-water buildings ".

Let's take a closer look at the mysteries of Wind River Open Virtualization alization Profile. Open Virtualization Profile is designed to minimize latency and provide reliable performance for next-generation product design and development based on Open source software in the network, automotive, medical, industrial, and other industries. This fully integrated and performance-Optimized Solution integrates a dedicated operating system and a number of applications and functions running on the hardware into a system. Its advantages include:

● Based on the main principles of Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV, both methods extract network functions from hardware through Abstraction

● Through special optimization, high performance, real-time and deterministic execution functions can be achieved, and latency is reduced

● Reduce OPEX and CAPEX costs by integrating software and hardware, reducing space occupation and energy consumption, and improving operational support efficiency

● Better use of idle network elements to improve network efficiency

● Run on the existing standard server platform

● Wind River's world-renowned support and service teams provide assurance

Blueprint for telecom network Cloud computing

The open cloud architecture supported by open-source software technology is clearly a desirable scenario. Wind River Open Virtualization alization Profile is the latest step towards this blueprint for the telecom network industry.

Last fall, Wind River released Wind River Intelligent Network Platform (Wind River Intelligent Network Platform), which aims to help telecom networks speed up data transmission and ensure its security.

In the spring of this year, Wind River and Intel cooperated to launch Wind River Open Network Software (Wind River Open Network Software), which provides SDN (Software Defined Network) for Intel Open Network Platform) and NFV (network function virtualization) capabilities.

Recently, Wind River has taken another bigger step to release the OVP (Open Virtualization Profile ).

The successive steps of the past are to make the telecom industry feel that the future network will not be difficult.