Essential innovations in network management were highlighted at the EANTC Multi-Vendor Interoperability Testing. Key achievements included the successful testing of PCEP Association Groups and SDN Transport Slicing, which demonstrated improvements in efficiency and automation in multi-vendor settings.
PCEP Association Groups
The Path Computation Element Protocol (PCEP) provides a standardized network management protocol. At EANTC, we have tested it over many years. This year, Cisco, Juniper, and Nokia validated the interoperability of management solutions and routers regarding a new feature: PCEP Association Groups. These Association Groups are a powerful feature to group label-switched paths (LSPs); the groups can be used to define associations between sets of LSPs or between a set of LSPs and attributes (such as configuration parameters or behaviors). Jose Liste from Cisco and Diego Achaval from Nokia will explain all the details in this video.
SDN Transport Slicing
Multi-vendor network management – where SDN controllers from one group of vendors manage routers from another – has been tested at the annual EANTC interoperability events for several years. A group of steadily engaged vendors has kept improving and extending the multi-vendor interoperability of this SDN management topic. This year, Ciena, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, Juniper, and Keysight have successfully tested multi-vendor SDN provisioning of network slices. Slices are well-known as a 5G topic; it is often forgotten that slicing is not only a radio technology challenge. Sliced traffic with application-specific quality requirements must be grouped (“colored”) and forwarded across the network accordingly. There are multiple standardized solutions to configure colored traffic paths in a Segment Routing network; they all have in common that they are complex to configure. Therefore, it is crucial to benefit from automated provisioning even if the underlying transport network has components from multiple vendors; this is what Sujay Murthy from Cisco and Reza Rokui from Ciena explain in this video.
Keep an eye out for our publications. They will show how these innovations are shaping the future of networking technology, ensuring multi-vendor interoperability and readiness for next-generation demands. You can also read the full report here.