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Comcast joins the OpenDaylight software-defined networking party

900-pound silverback seeks share accommodation with like-minded heavyweights

Heavyweight US carrier Comcast has seen the light and wants its input into how software-defined networking (SDN) works.

The company has become the OpenDaylight Foundation's first end-user member, although it has been a code contributor.

As SDX Central notes, Comcast was involved in the CableLabs contribution, the PacketCable PCMM project. This “incubation-stage” software will bring cable modem provisioning into the orbit of an OpenDaylight controller.

It, along with Lenovo, is joining as a silver-level sponsor.

Comcast senior principal engineer (and a member of the OpenDaylight Advisory Group) Chris Luke writes that the carrier's Programmable Network Platform fits well with the OpenFlow approach.

Luke's angle is that SDN can simplify handoffs from telcos' fearsomely-complex OSS/BSS, given a “common framework and useful abstractions”, letting engineers accelerate service development and deployment.

Technologies on Luke's list include segment routing, LISP (the Locator ID Separation Protocol), and network-edge NFV (for example, the virtual CPE model).

LISP, defined in RFC 6830, is a Cisco-authored proposal to separate a user's “routing locator” from the endpoint identifier (which might be your user ID or device ID). At the moment, IP address identifies both the destination of a route and the endpoint / user, which gets in the way of multihoming and mobility. ®

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