Radisys contributes open source EPC to M-CORD, innovation to accelerate global 5G deployments
MENLO PARK, Calif. Nov. 10, 2016 – CORD Project, the community advancing the leading open source service delivery platform that combines SDN, NFV, and elastic cloud services to redefine network access, today announces availability of the first open sourced disaggregated and virtualized Evolved Packet Core (EPC). Radisys, a system integrator in the service provider space and a CORD partner, contributed its EPC framework, a foundation for many EPC products, to M-CORD.
Global mobile data traffic is widely predicted to continue to increase exponentially until 2020. This proliferation of connected users and devices challenges service providers to transform their mobile networks into agile platforms for service delivery, with significantly reduced Capex and Opex paradigms, based on white boxes, open source and efficient and flexible use of the precious wireless spectrum. Service providers and the larger ecosystem are defining 5G to address these challenges.
M-CORD helps to pave the way for service-driven 5G architecture through capabilities such as programmable Radio Access Network (RAN), disaggregated and virtualized EPC, mobile edge computing, and end-to-end slicing from RAN to EPC. CORD and its partners are developing the open M-CORD platform to deliver the capabilities that will enable 5G. M-CORD is built on CORD as the base platform that delivers economies of scale and cloud agility to the central office by integrating open networking technologies, merchant silicon and commodity white boxes to enable rapid creation of new mobile edge services.
CORD partner Radisys has been advancing M-CORD to enable an open and flexible reference architecture that will further transform the mobile network from a transport network into a service delivery platform, allowing operators to achieve considerable opportunities for edge service.
“Until now, closed technologies have impeded the innovation needed for 5G,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation and ON.Lab. “Today, with Radisys’ transformative open source EPC contribution, M-CORD is on its way to becoming a completely end-to-end open source platform that will deliver the fundamental value of 5G with economies of scale required in the mobile network and accelerate delivery of new services.”
“The open source driven model is a fundamental element for the 5G roadmap as it enables extraordinary agility for identifying and responding to subscribers’ needs far more quickly than traditional mobility standards,” said Joseph Sulistyo, senior director of open networking solutions and strategy, Radisys Corporation. “The integration of open source EPC enhances the M-CORD platform to provide boundless core service flexibility and brings us a step closer to unlocking the promise of 5G. Radisys has been a sustained contributor and prominent integrator of M-CORD since the first demonstration at Open Networking Summit (ONS) 2016, and we are thrilled with our continued collaboration with ON.Lab and partners and the extended community to embrace open source and enrich SDN and NFV in M-CORD for optimizing 5G infrastructure.”
Radisys’ EPC has served as a foundation for many EPC solutions currently in use in production networks of service providers around the globe. Designed to be modular for ease-of-use, Radisys’ open source EPC contribution to M-CORD will allow the community to explore and demonstrate innovative architectures that can take advantage of the modularity of EPC. For example, M-CORD is using EPC building blocks to demonstrate virtualization, slicing and mobile edge computing.
Supporting Commentary for M-CORD:
AT&T
“We are very pleased with M-CORD progress towards creating an open platform for LTE and 5G built with merchant silicon, white boxes and open source,” said Andre Fuetsch, CTO and President of AT&T Labs. “As we move towards an increasingly open sourced mobile core, we can innovate LTE and 5G solutions faster and create services such as IoT, safety, mobile health and others with improved QoE and agility.”
“We are excited to see the community come together and embrace an open platform for innovation with M-CORD,” said Ankur Jain, Principal Engineer, Google. “This provides a framework on which the community can experiment with building next generation networks that are easier to manage, and where the network layer exchanges information with the application layer, thereby bringing efficiency to both.”
SK Telecom
“The growing momentum for the M-CORD initiative is exciting,” said Alex Choi, CTO and EVP of SK Telecom. “The open CORD community is developing M-CORD to deliver the key components needed for 5G deployment. SKT has contributed to M-CORD, collaborating with the community on multiple POCs and the first major distribution. We look forward to our continued participation and to using the open reference implementation of CORD for experimentation and trials soon.”
Verizon
“Verizon recognizes M-CORD as an important open platform to help enable future innovative mobile services,” said Srini Kalapala, Vice President of Technology and Supplier Strategy at Verizon. “We continue to contribute to M-CORD while working with the larger ecosystem to realize M-CORD’s full potential toward accelerating next generation networks.”
The diverse CORD community comprises service provider partners AT&T, China Unicom, Google, NTT Communications, SK Telecom, and Verizon, leading vendors Ciena, Cisco, Fujitsu, Intel, NEC, Nokia, Radisys and Samsung, and more than 30 collaborating organizations.
Whether an individual or an organization, all are encouraged to get involved with the growing open source CORD community. CORD Project is hosted by The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancingprofessional open source management for mass collaboration.
Additional Resources
- Join the growing community
- Download, test and build upon CORD
- Getting Started with CORD Project
- CORD Technical Features
About CORD Project
CORD™ (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter) brings datacenter economics and cloud flexibility to the telco Central Office and to the entire access network. CORD is an open source service delivery platform that combines SDN, NFV, and elastic cloud services to network operators and service providers. It integrates ONOS, OpenStack, Docker, and XOS—all running on merchant silicon, white-box switches, commodity servers, and disaggregated access devices. The CORD reference implementation serves as a platform for multiple domains of use, with open source communities building innovative services for residential, mobile, and enterprise network customers. The CORD ecosystem comprises ON.Lab and organizations that are funding and contributing to the CORD initiative. These organizations include AT&T, China Unicom, Google, NTT Communications Corp., SK Telecom Co. Ltd., Verizon, Ciena Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Fujitsu Ltd., Intel Corporation, NEC Corporation, Nokia, Radisys and Samsung Electronics, Co. See the full list of members, including CORD’s collaborators, and learn how you can get involved with CORD at opencord.org.
CORD is an independently funded software project hosted by The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration to fuel innovation across industries and ecosystems.
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