The Broadband Forum has issued the second code release of its Open Broadband – Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) project.
The Forum says the release will significantly improve the speed and ease at which service providers can deploy new, standardised and automated cloud-based access infrastructures.
Timothy Carey, of Nokia, Project Lead of the OB-BAA Open Source Project, explained, “One of the key advantages of the BAA layer is that it provides a standardised, vendor-agnostic northbound interface for SDN [software-defined network] management and control entities. In addition, service providers might require modifications to standardised models for various types of access nodes to meet their network needs.
“While Release 1 of OB-BAA enabled service provider migration to cloud-based deployments, what Release 2 aims to do is ease and accelerate that process even further.
“OB-BAA Release 2.0 allows the deployment of standard adapters that come with the platform and device‑specific adapters that are unique to each vendor’s implementation of the access node.”
Widening the pool
Release 2.0 of OB-BAA builds on the functionalities enabled by Releases 1.0 and 1.1, opening it up to a wider range of vendors and network configurations. The guidance aims to facilitate co-existence with, seamless migration to and adaptation of an increasing variety of software-defined access technologies.
The latest OB-BAA Release 2.0 also expands the types of proprietary access nodes that can be managed and controlled via the BAA layer. This includes enabling additional adaptation of access nodes to meet individual network needs and providing examples of common functions that service providers are likely to perform when automating and managing their networks.
“These functionalities facilitate migration to cloud-based deployments for an increased number of service providers,” a statement from The Broadband Forum said.
Meeting the needs of SDN/NFV
Jialiang Jin of China Telecom, who is a member of the OB-BAA project team, stated, “OB-BAA is a key solution for an operator’s traditional access network to evolve towards an SDN/NFV-based network in the future. With its help, operators can build a more intelligent access network.
“Release 2.0 brings more detailed functionality for essential network operations and covers more types of access nodes, both of which greatly enhance the OB-BAA software.
We look forward to future releases of OB-BAA, where more and more functionality can be added to enable open and flexible solutions needed by the SDN/NFV-based network.”