OpenDaylight Developer Spotlight: Christopher Price

OpenDaylight is an open source project and open to all. Developers can contribute at the individual level just like any other open source project. This blog series highlights the people who are collaborating to create the future of SDN and NFV.

Christopher Price heads the network architecture and standardization team for Ericsson's IP and Broadband division where he focuses on the development of technology and innovation. Across his career he has worked as an integrator, verification engineer, developer and technical leader for products ranging from switched voice to Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based solutions, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and Network Management Systems (NMS) technologies.

How did you get involved with OpenDaylight? What is your background?

Ericsson has been involved, via our research team, in the evolution of SDN for around seven years in close cooperation with Stanford and the Open Networking Foundation. I first became involved in SDN while working with our DPI products looking at technologies to improve efficiency in slow-path to fast-path transitions. Later, while working in the area of NMS, SDN technologies again became apparent as an area of interest in provisioning and automation workflows. When Ericsson joined the OpenDaylight Project, I was very interested to be a part of that initiative as I believe collaboration rather than competition in the controller/protocol space will benefit SDN and our industry.

What projects are you working on for OpenDaylight? Any new developments to share?

Ericsson is developing software primarily on the OpenFlow capabilities of the OpenDaylight controller.

The OpenFlow activity is a great example how a project can come together in a community like OpenDaylight. We are collaborating with our colleagues at IBM and Cisco to get the controller-level functionality in place and colleagues from Pantheon technologies to develop a state-of-the-art OpenFlow library. We have a group of developers from across three continents and an evolving software architecture, and have spent a lot of time communicating and collaborating to bring a wide range of ideas and needs together into a concrete solution.

With the definition and activities going on in the development of the OpenDaylight controller, Ericsson is also active in the integration and test plans for the upcoming Hydrogen release. We are working with a like-minded group from across the industry including participants from Brocade, Flextronics, Huawei, Cisco and IBM to develop a quality assurance strategy and plan for the Hydrogen release.

People have different definitions for SDN depending on how they’re using the network. What’s your definition of SDN?

SDN is often viewed in the context of capturing and controlling the capabilities of a network. This is an attractive scope for the term, however I would amend that I don't see SDN as being limited to that definition. The real value of SDN is the point where applications are able to extract desired behaviors from the network while remaining unaware of it. SDN is still quite infantile in this context although many activities in OpenDaylight Project, an obvious activity is the Affinity project, are taking steps to implement enabling technologies.

At Ericsson we are focused on bringing SDN out of the data center and into the service provider Wide Area Network (WAN); of particular importance to us is the relevance of SDN technologies in mobility-enabled networks. With this focus guiding our participation in OpenDaylight Project, I see the technologies and protocols associated with SDN being applied in many ways, either as a method of extending an existing network function or for deploying or augmenting a network service/slices.  

I appreciate OpenDaylight does not attempt to dictate a specific protocol or technology as being relevant or irrelevant to SDN; the industry needs the possibility to explore and evaluate technologies without prejudice or pre-determinism.

What is NFV's relationship to SDN and how do you see them working together?

SDN defines an architecture that opens up the network by providing programmability and virtualization of network resources. NFV has similar goals in that it aims to provide a common environment for network applications to operate in virtual environments. One of the fundamental capabilities required to deploy any network function will be its ability to interact with and utilize network resources.

SDN then provides a valuable capability in an NFV environment, making it possible to address and use network resources as a set of capabilities rather than specific pieces of network equipment. I envision SDN and NFV will work together evolving the network by enabling the acceleration, and simplifying the delivery, of services while maintaining the security, reliability, performance and scalability that customers expect.  

From your perspective, what are the major benefits of making OpenDaylight an open source project?

OpenDaylight has the real potential to provide an industry standard SDN solution for the network. As the code becomes available I expect that it will be deployed in its various forms it is able to deliver access/aggregation use cases for, through WANs, into Gi-LAN and data center networks. It is this flexibility and the fact that OpenDaylight is open to all participants and free to use that make it an ideal platform for operators to begin to normalize their network operations.

OpenDaylight provides a foundation and community for any interested party to do just this; large vendors, universities, operators, start-ups are all welcome to participate. And I am seeing developers from all these community members. It is important that we view OpenDaylight as a vehicle for innovation and open collaboration. Vendors and operators alike should look to differentiate based on what we are able to achieve with SDN technologies, not the control layer itself.

What advice would you give to someone just getting started in OpenDaylight?

Don't be shy! OpenDaylight is an active community of like-minded developers collaborating on SDN technologies with experts from across the industry. So, get involved, ask questions, bring good ideas, attend a HackFest and start contributing code to build success. The best way to get going it simply to use the software, fix things, contribute a function, start a project and most importantly learn as much as you can about SDN technologies.