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White Paper
ONP 2.1 Platforms Maximize
Interoperability
Executive Summary
The most disruptive technologies to hit the communications
industry since the turn of this century are undoubtedly Software
Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization
(NFV). Together they are the key change catalysts defining the
new IP architecture and the next generation telecom network.
The advancements in workload consolidation and virtualization
technology on general purpose servers have usurped the
previous absence of standards to unify the vendor-specific
capabilities of proprietary networking gear, and have provided the
means by which carriers can drive cost and operational
efficiencies into their networks ahead of 5G and widespread IoT
deployment.
The path to the Telco Cloud and to 5G takes us on a journey that
starts with the decoupling of network functions from underlying
hardware and their redeployment on standard open modular
servers as hypervisor-driven virtualized network functions. Above
all, virtualization enables elasticity, or the ability for service
capacity to be moved around to meet demand, making sure that
hardware resources are not idle during off-peak periods and that
sudden peaks in load can be handled where needed, in real time. It also allows CSPs to reduce the number of deployed
systems in their network through better utilization of resources and helps to drive much needed cost savings.
When NFV is paired with SDN, real efficiencies can occur as network administrators can now shape traffic from a
centralized control point without having to physically touch switches, delivering services to wherever they are needed
without regard to the specific devices a server or other device is connected to. Together NFV & SDN are essential to
attain cloudification and create a distributed telco cloud where workloads can be moved to where they are best suited.
This sets the scenes for 5G networking slicing and the ability for CSPs to enable new businesses with cost-effective
price models adapted to the industries in which they operate.
This paper focuses on the evolutionary stages for cloudification then covers the key software building blocks that will be
needed to enable NFV, and ultimately ICT transformation to 5G. It describes how Intel® Open Networking Platform
(Intel® ONP) Server running on innovative new networking platforms based on Intel® silicon can help reduce the cost
and effort required for service providers and vendors alike to adopt and deploy SDN and NFV architectures.

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Table of Contents
Overview .........................................................................................................................................................3
Functional Separation .....................................................................................................................................3
Network Virtualization .....................................................................................................................................3
Cloudification...................................................................................................................................................5
Intel®
Open Network Platform .........................................................................................................................6
Summary.........................................................................................................................................................7

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Overview
The overriding goal described in the initial ETSI operators whitepaper that laid the foundation for NFV, was
to create an environment that enables new business models and services, increases innovation, and
prompts new vendors to enter the telecommunications market place. The vision was one of NFV creating
new ways to monetize telecommunications infrastructure.
To achieve this, service providers need to evolve their infrastructures as well as their operations and
business management practices.
There are several evolutionary stages that service providers need to go through as they deploy virtualized
network functions and evolve their networks from fixed function proprietary technology. These are namely:
 Functional separation
 Network virtualization
 Cloudification
 Full automation through programmability
The overall benefits of NFV can be realized once a service provider reaches the stage of fully automated
cloud. The scope of this document focuses on the first three stages shown above, describing the means to
provide a solid NFVI as a platform for fully automated workflows.
Functional Separation
Functional separation starts with software defined networking which allows users to program network
layers, separating the control plane and data plane. By enabling greater network programmability,
developers can begin to optimize their network resources and increase the agility of their network. Here,
OpenDaylight provides a common open source framework on top of which vendor products and services
can be built, giving the ecosystem the space they need to innovate with the latest tools and the service
providers with the building blocks they need to develop new solutions.
OpenDaylight encompasses all the essentials for software defined networking, including a network
resource controller and utilities for management, security, and virtualization. The OpenDaylight controller is
a key component of Intel® ONP.
Network Virtualization
This a fundamental phase of NFV in which network functions run on hypervisors and general purpose
hardware. The concept of NFV allows developers to take functions that have been traditionally deployed as
hardware, but now deploy them as software. Common examples of this are virtual machines that operate
as network elements such as Broadband Network Gateways, Carrier-Grade NATs, routers and a list of
mobile network nodes as well as firewalls, load balancers, IDS/IPS, VPN, application firewalls, and many
other service/functions.

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With NFV, it becomes possible to break down what was a monolithic piece of expensive hardware needing
multiple command lines to get it configured into a suite of virtual appliances running on servers or smaller
devices.
Figure 1. Traditional and Bare-Metal Networking Devices
Once the traditional network device has been disaggregated into a bare metal device, virtualization can
begin with the hardware, OS and Application components potentially being provided by different vendors.
Virtualizing network functions brings service providers new opportunities to optimize their infrastructures
and increase service agility. They can move toward a more harmonized cloud-based infrastructure with this
approach, where network elements and applications are defined as sets of virtual machines, virtual storage
and virtual network configurations.
With connected hardware resources more efficiently shared across applications, the infrastructure
becomes a much more cost effective platform for operational transformation and the delivery of carrier
cloud services to enterprise.
Two of the key components to achieve virtualization are Open vSwitch and the Data Plane Development
Kit (DPDK).
Open vSwitch essentially provides hypervisors with the ability to bridge traffic between VMs and physical
interfaces. It addresses multi-server virtualization deployments, often characterized by highly dynamic end-
points and the maintenance of logical abstractions.
Open vSwitch makes all network state associated with a network entity easily identifiable and able to
migrate between different hosts, such that if a VM migrates between end-hosts it provides support for both
configuring and migrating network state between instances.
Open vSwitch also supports features that allow a network control system to respond and adapt as the
environment changes by supporting a network state database that supports remote triggers. In this way,
orchestration software can monitor various aspects of the network, and respond if and when they change,
for example to track VM migrations. OpenFlow is also supported as a method of exporting remote access
to control traffic.
In many ways, Open vSwitch targets a different point in the design space than previous hypervisor
networking stacks, focusing on the need for automated and dynamic network control in large-scale Linux-
based virtualization environments.

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For communication oriented functions, high-performance packet processing is available through high-
speed multi-core CPUs with high I/O bandwidth, the use of smart Ethernet NICs for load sharing and TCP
Offloading, and routing packets directly to Virtual Machine memory, as well as poll-mode Ethernet drivers
(rather than interrupt driven, for example DPDK).
The data plane is a logical system entity which processes the bulk of the packetized networking traffic.
DPDK ensures that networking infrastructure elements are fast, flexible, and open through a set of libraries
and drivers that accelerate data plane performance on general purpose processors by an order of
magnitude when compared with other prominent software architectures.
DPDK enables CPU cores to process packets continuously, unimpeded by the operating system, other
applications, or interrupts. This greatly increases system performance and determinism in applications
leveraging NFV.
Cloudification
Cloudification is the stage in which virtualization based on standard interfaces provides an infrastructure
where VNFs are interoperable with, and portable between, hardware platforms, hypervisors, and cloud
resource control systems of different vendors.
OpenStack is another key element of Intel® ONP and is also identified as one of the main components in
the ETSI NFV architectural framework. It has become the cloud platform of choice for service providers and
enterprise as an integration engine to manage bare metal, virtual machines, and container orchestration
frameworks with a single set of APIs. As a cloud operating system OpenStack can control large pools of
compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a telecom datacenter, all managed through a
dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a
web interface.
Figure 2. OpenStack Cloud OS components
OpenStack is also essential to the Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (VIM) defined by ETSI. The VIM is
the part of the Management and Orchestration (MANO) function that controls the assignment of virtualized
compute, storage and network resources from the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) to support VNFs.
Enhanced Platform Awareness (EPA) is another important addition to Openstack that enables VMs to
automatically take advantage of advanced hardware capabilities. The contributions from Intel®
and others
to the Openstack Cloud OS enable matching of server capabilities to VM workload requirements prior to

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launching a VM. This allows for specific workloads such as encryption to run on a hardware based crypto
accelerator for example to improve throughput performance.
EPA enables the Nova filter scheduler to detect platform capabilities embedded within processor, chipset
and PCIe-based technologies and install the VM onto a selected platform with the enabled features.
Intel® Open Network Platform
Intel® ONP is a reference architecture that provides engineering guidance and ecosystem enablement
support to encourage widespread adoption of SDN and NFV solutions in Telco, Enterprise and Cloud. It is
not a commercial product, but a pre-production reference that drives development and showcase SDN/NFV
solution capabilities.
Intel®
ONP reference architecture brings together Industry Standard High Volume Servers based on Intel®
Architecture and a software stack composed of open source, open standard software ingredients.
One of the key objectives of Intel®
ONP is to align and optimize key Open Community software ingredients
for architects and engineers targeting high performing SDN and NFV open source based solutions.
Primary Intel®
ONP Software Ingredients included are:
 DPDK for accelerated packet processing
 Open vSwitch
 DPDK which support enables much for improved
dataplane performance
 OpenDaylight controller
 OpenStack orchestrator.
Advantech develops and produces network computing
equipment that closely follows the Intel® ONP for Servers
reference design.
This allows vendors, integrators and communication service
providers alike to benefit from the engineering efficiencies of
an integrated platform.
Developers can choose all or integrate only some of the
elements to build their NFVI solutions on Advantech hardware
designed for their specific SDN and NFV use cases.
By incorporating specific Intel®
software optimizations on
Advantech platforms, developers can leverage tested bundles
to accelerate development, reduce costs, and improve
alignment with the software ecosystem.
Advantech offers a number of platforms suitable for Intel®
ONP
testing and evaluation. These span entry and high-end
appliances, to carrier grade servers, and modular carrier grade
blade servers with up to 300 Intel®
Xeon®
cores destined for a
Figure 3. The Intel ONP Stack running
on the Advantech FWA-3260.
A white box appliance based on the
Intel
®
Xeon
®
Processor D-1500 with
up to 16 cores for vE-CPE
deployment, allowing vendors,
integrators and communication
service providers alike to benefit from
the engineering efficiencies of a
tested NFVI platform.

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range of virtual customer edge and virtual service edge deployments.
The latest platforms from Advantech all incorporate the key processors and Ethernet controllers supported
in the Intel®
ONP release 2.1 namely:
 Intel®
Xeon®
processor D-1500 product family
 Intel®
Xeon®
processor E5-2600 v3
 Intel®
Xeon®
processor E5-2600 v4
 Intel®
Ethernet Controller X710-AM2 2x40 GbE or 4x10 GbE
 Intel®
Ethernet Controller XL710-AM1 1x40 GbE or 4x10 GbE
 Intel®
Ethernet Controller X540-BT2 2x10 GBaseT
 Intel®
Ethernet Controller 82599ES 2x10 GbE
Summary
NFV adoption has been accelerated by the availability of open, modular hardware platform based mainly
on Intel®
Architecture, and typically offering more processing performance per dollar than specialized
proprietary networking hardware.
The over-arching goal of Intel®
ONP is to reduce the cost and effort required for service providers, data-
center operators, TEMs, and OEMs to adopt and deploy SDN and NFV architectures.
The availability of systems from Advantech that support ONP on the latest Intel®
silicon helps accelerate
the development of new networking functions and provides a means for operators to achieve the
competitive advantages of cost reduction and increased business agility that SDN and NFV bring.

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Email: NCG@advantech.com
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