ZTE's First OPNFV Arno Testbed to Drive Network Virtualization Innovations

ZTE SDN/NFV Joint Open Lab has successfully completed interconnection tests with partners including ARM, Centec Networks, Accton and Hillstone

21 September 2015, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, announced the availability of the company's first testbed based on OPNFV Arno to enable partners to verify their NFV (network function virtualization) products for compatibility.

The testbed, a project of the ZTE SDN/NFV Joint Open Lab, will provide an open environment for NFV technology developers and help promote the development of network virtualization technologies internationally. Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV), a San Francisco-based organization focused on driving the development of NFV, announced the availability of the Arno open source software in June.

Since opening in 2014, ZTE SDN/NFV Joint Open Lab has successfully completed interconnection tests with partners including ARM, Centec Networks, Accton and Hillstone. By building a hybrid cloud platform accommodating both the IT multi-tenant public cloud and carrier-class private cloud, and providing SDN and NFV development and test environments applicable to major scenarios covering the data center, access network, bearer network, and core network, the lab aims to accelerate industrialization of relevant products and solutions.

In 2014, ZTE launched the ElasticNet SDN (software-defined networking) IPRAN (internet protocol radio access network) solution, enabling customers to virtualise massive access-layer equipment, simplifying network structures and operations and maintenance (O&M). ZTE also provides an SDN-based Virtual Data Center (vDC) that rides on the popular configurations and infrastructure of the industry. The open software and hardware structure allows the vDC to flexibly connect and manage the SDN devices, components, and modules from other manufacturers, to effectively coordinate computing, storage, network and other key elements, for powerful networking and service verification. The successful interconnection of the ZTE cloud platform with devices from other vendors represents ZTE ElasticNet's strength in multi-vendor interconnection and integration, as well as ZTE's efforts in the evolution of SDN in various fields.

ZTE also actively participates in SDN and NFV open source organizations, and became a platinum member of OPNFV in 2014. In addition to OPNFV, ZTE is an active contributor to OpenStack and OpenDayLight communities. The ZTE SDN & NFV Joint Open Lab has taken the lead in deploying the OPNFV ARNO release and making it open to all companies and individual developers exploring and exploiting NFV, providing them with a more efficient and easy-to-use platform and creating a win-win situation for the industry ecosystem.

ZTE published the latest SDN and NFV White Paper in the first half of 2015. At present, ZTE has partnered with many operators and companies worldwide in the SDN/NFV field, and is the exclusive contractor of the biggest NFV commercial network with the largest user base in the world, designed to support 100 million users.