Operators are busy working to define and publish wireless transport standards in an effort to drive the wireless transport ecosystem – software providers, integrators and hardware vendors, towards a software driven vision.
The goal of operators is to create a standardized interface for connecting all types of microwave devices to an open source SDN controller. Operators believe that this evolution will help them escape from the closed systems they now use, where the network elements of a vendor are typically controlled by the management system of the vendor. With such closed systems, operators need custom integrations between umbrella management systems and the vendor’s management system, that are time consuming and costly.
Even more important is that such closed systems are difficult to be expanded; their custom integrations need to be taken into account whenever a new service is to be introduced or in general when an innovation is considered to be introduced.
Open APIs are expected to solve this problem.
The new Wireless Transport standards focus on NETCONF open interface between the SDN Controllers and the Network Elements (southbound), using the YANG open Data Models. The standards also focus on open application programming interface between the SDN Controller and umbrella management systems (northbound).
This open microwave architecture is expected to foster a variety of new of applications from great number of software providers.
External References
ONF Technical Library: A great source of information for SDN/NFV and networking in general
IETF Web Site :A complete list of SNMP standards can be found there.
RFC Editor: Link to NETCONF resources in IETF’s comprehensive web search tool.
OpenMicrowave.com: A website addressing microwave and SDN experts at operators, software providers, integrators and hardware vendors. to promote a software driven ecosystem for wireless transport in 6GHz to 80GHz.
