Linux Foundation Announces Major Network Functions Virtualization Project 40
Andy Updegrove writes: The Linux Foundation this morning announced the latest addition to its family of major hosted open source initiatives: the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV). Its mission is to develop and maintain a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform for the telecom industry. Importantly, the thirty-eight founding members include not only cloud and service infrastructure vendors, but telecom service providers, developers and end users as well. The announcement of OPNFV highlights three of the most significant trends in IT: virtualization (the NFV part of the name refers to network function virtualization), moving software and services to the cloud, and collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services. The project is also significant for reflecting a growing recognition that open source projects need to incorporate open standards planning into their work programs from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.
Businessese Bingo (Score:5, Funny)
collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services
Bingo!
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collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services
Bingo!
I was thinking the same thing. They basically came up with a "great" reason for a whole new standard. To hell with the old standard! Whoever invented that was obviously dumb!
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Let's try a sanity reword and measure how much they added unnecessary(caveat: I'm prone to being overly verbose as well, and I won't do a great job)
We make open source middleware
Did I get it right?
Re:Businessese Bingo (Score:4, Funny)
* complex open source middleware
* for the cloud
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That's the part before what the OP quoted. And all software is complex, or at least complex enough to have bugs.
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all software is complex, or at least complex enough to have bugs.
Your first Hello World didn't go so well, did it?
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I had to power-cycle my C= 64 ...
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That's not really software though, is it? Think about the "ware" part, in means a vendable item.
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I follow this area from decently close, although I'mnot a contributor. A less-buzzwordy explanation is that the project is adapting current virtualization and middleware infrastructure to let telecom workloads (network elements) run in VMs. Broadly this means developing ways to reduce packet processing overheads, more efficient virtual switching, and controlling latency much more tightly than current mainstream solutions.
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I follow this area from decently close, although I'mnot a contributor. A less-buzzwordy explanation is that the project is adapting current virtualization and middleware infrastructure to let telecom workloads (network elements) run in VMs. Broadly this means developing ways to reduce packet processing overheads, more efficient virtual switching, and controlling latency much more tightly than current mainstream solutions.
Maybe you can answer this then: What is a "Telecom workload" except perhaps a domestic spying node? Isn't the point of being a Telecom to just move the fucking packets? Why are we virtualizing that when at present, big dedicated routers are needed to do it properly? Are they seriously saying they want to get an even bigger machine, put a bunch of software in the middle that might increase reliability (but most likely just create a new, unknown single point of failure), and call it "improved"? Or, are t
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I can answer that. A Telecom workload is one of the 12 systems in between two people talking on their cellphones. You're calling from the Sprint Network using an iPhone, you call a friend using Tmo and an old Motorola Cliq. A whole bunch of systems get involved when you press send and they have to:
Check whether his number was ported out of area-code, and find out who owns it.
Convert your i-voice codec to an appropriate standard for exchange with that carrier
Tmo has to look him up to find his last regist
Re:Businessese Bingo and Telecom Workloads (Score:3)
No, the point of being a telecom company is to connect your customers together, move their data where they want it efficiently, and get them to pay you for it. Telecom workloads not only include digging ditches for your access line and running wavelength division multiplexors across them, they also include things like routing IPv4/IPv6, firewalls, load balancing, intrusion detection, preventing and mitigating DDOS, hosting CDNs, routing lots of private networks that all run RFC1918 addresses and maybe VLAN
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No this is more reasonable than SDN. SDN pretends to be a road to virtualizing the capabilities of actual grunt-work networking equipment, without being arsed to actually be able to enumerate said capabilities and thus is doomed to never fully succeed. This, however, is for the higher level intelligence well suited to virtualization -- basically the stuff thateats all your RSPs' CPU.
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'cause
Just doesn't sound as catchy.
The path ahead is pretty well laid out (Score:1)
Beware (Score:3)
The telecoms contributors will play dirty. I promise you.
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the free software community came to be because tech heads cdn't get the tools they needed on small machines using proprietary OS. this is the core of FS strength. f*ck with that and we will go away.
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The telecoms would add X25d with ASN.1 line coding to systemd if they could get away with it.
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I have lived the ASN.1 horror. I will kill it. I will show no mercy. Know this, for it is true.
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The telecoms are looking for cheaper implementations for shit they already have to deploy. They want to piggy back on everyone else's work, so they don't have to spend so much money.
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They will try to put CALEA crap in by default with no option to turn off.
horrible VM latency (Score:2)
Translation: VM's are cheap and flexible, but have horrible packet latency
Solution: don't use a VM
Move along, nothing to see here, yawn.
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Crossbow for Linux (Score:1)
Would be just fantastic, but for the love of god please don't let poettering anywhere near this