The OPNFV Project, an open source platform aiming to make telecoms networks more flexible through network functions virtualization (NFV), has signed up a set of new members including tech pioneer ETRI and top telecoms test organization UNH-IOL, as well as a commercial software vendor signed up for the Silver level of membership, which pays for the organization’s work. 

NFV can deliver network services as easily deployable virtual functions, making telecoms networks more flexible, and building on the underlying abailities of software defined networking (SDN). OPNFV is an open source project under the Linux Foundation, and the new members add to its collaborative muscle and will help deliver completed services.

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Forward to vitrtual nets

“I’m thrilled to kick off the new year by welcoming three new organizations to OPNFV,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) is a US government-backed research institute with a history of inventions, including 4M DRAM memory, time division exchange (TDX) and several mobile communications standards going back to 1976.

Openet sells real-time business support systems (BSS) to telecoms providers who in turn serve around 600 million mobile telecoms users. Its products are based on open standards.

OCP UNH IOL plugfest
University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab – UNH IOL

Finally, the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab (UNH-IOL) is an independent, third-party laboratory which plays an important role in compatibility testing for several leading open network standards, including Ethernet, and Open Compute.

“We’re proud to be joining the existing community of experts working together toward the common goal of accelerating open source NFV,” said Erica Johnson, director, UNH-IOL. 

OPNFV has more than 100 developers from service providers and commercial suppliers collaborating on an open source, carrier-grade, integrated platform for NFV, which should reach its second release, Brahmaputra, in February adding additional projects and features to the platform as well as additional documentation. The current version, Arno, is available here. 

Other major sponsors of OPNFV include Brocade, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, Intel and Juniper.