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The basic requirements that communications and data service network providers try to meet are availability, reliability, performance, and response-time requirements. So far these were being achieved by building on proprietary platforms that are closed systems, expensive to develop and maintain, and lack support for third party software and emerging standards.

Today, the industry is turning away from proprietary platforms towards open, standards-based building blocks for hardware, software platforms and high availability middleware. This approach offers cost-effective, timely delivery of new architectures, new services, and increased bandwidth.

CGL stands at the center of the move to open architectures in the telecom industry. The initiative began with the vision that communication services will be delivered using open standard carrier grade platforms to overcome the restrictions of traditional proprietary solutions. “CGL is reaching the stage where Linux was four years ago at the enterprises. It's still in the growth phase but already carriers and network equipment vendors (NEPs) are attracted to the overall benefits of Linux-vendor independence, openness, extensibility, and cost-and they recognize its potential for their markets,” says Satish Mohan, head, Engineering, Red Hat India.

As the market for Linux-based telecommunication products continues to grow, products based on CGL are being developed by some of the world's largest equipment manufacturers and Linux software developers. Mukul Agrawal, managing director, Unisys Global Services India, shares some encouraging signs, “The tide is turning for the telecommunications market. Recent announcements from a number of ISPs demonstrate the increasing adoption of Linux to reduce costs and enable a higher level of flexibility in telecommunications devices. CGL is increasingly being adopted by telecom service providers, airlines and banks.”

Must Standardize
Convergence of telecommunications, computers and broadcasting, has led to the emergence of more integrated info-communication choices for consumers. Standardization is a crucial part of this new picture, as it delivers global interconnectivity and interoperability among different equipment, systems and networks, promising truly ubiquitous use of info-communications for users.

Organizations like Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (ATP) strongly moot the proposal of having a framework for open telecom systems especially for the Asia-Pacific region where standardization is essential to harmonize the need of the market, the available technologies and the manufacturing capability.

“A common framework for the TEMs and NEPs ensures faster time to market and CGL propels standardisation in the telecom market,” says Praveen Sawkar, regional manager – South Asia, Sun Microsystems. “For the service provider, it is beneficial to have a common or standardised platform to deploy advanced technologies. Also this eliminates vendor lock-in,” he adds.

With the emergence of IP-based telephony, carriers have started to look at technologies based on open standards. Increasingly, open software and commercial off-the-shelf  (COTS) hardware are being seen as the means for rapid deployment of new voice and data services, while reducing capital expenses and operating costs, enabling equipment providers to stay competitive and profitable.

The OSDL Backing
To crystallize CGL with the objective of achieving the functionality and performance needed for carrier-grade platforms, the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) established the Carrier Grade Linux Working Group (CGLWG). This body, comprises leading telecom vendors and open source software developers, gathers requirements, publishes specifications, and guides the direction for efforts needed to achieve carrier grade Linux.

CGL gained more momentum with leading telecom vendors supporting it, who became the core members of the OSDL CGLWG. Linux distribution suppliers are now demonstrating that they can meet the emerging needs of telecommunications by registering (disclosing publicly) how their Linux-based software platform products address the requirements as defined in the CGL Requirements Definition.

The CGLWG identified three main types of applications that carrier-grade Linux will support-gateways application, signaling server and management server applications. As for mobile networks, CGL will target all types of server nodes running at all layers of a next generation network: service, control and connectivity layers. “CGL is simply a branding mechanism provided by OSDL. Linux distributions can register with CGL, and this action announces an alignment of the distribution features with the requirements in the CGL specification. There is not a formal certification suite,” clarifies Faisal Paul, country manger, High Performance Computing, HP India.

Increasing Footprint
In February this year, the CGL version 3.2 specifications were released, following which several Linux distribution companies have registered. The SCOPE Alliance, a grouping of major telecom networking equipment vendors, published a profile for a carrier-grade Linux operating system. The profile published in June this year, builds on the CGL 3.2 and prioritizes the CGL 3.2 'roadmap' that is necessary to support carrier-grade base platforms for network equipment providers.

Last year, the CGL Initiative Group held a meeting for the first time with Carriers and NEPs to exchange best practices, to identify enablers for escalated Linux/CGL deployment and explore new areas that CGL can address. The meetings were attended by carriers such as British Telecom, France Telecom, and NTT DoCoMo, and by NEPs such as Motorola, NEC, NTT Labs, and Nortel.

Equipment manufacturers like Motorola have further fuelled the momentum by backing the open source adoption. In early June this year, Motorola became a founding member of the Communication Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA). About 20 telecom companies have joined CP-TA that attempts to develop interoperability testing requirements, methodologies and procedures based on specifications developed by standards development organizations like OSDL/ CGL.

CGL is for Real
In the last two years the CGL initiative has made significant inroads with new products for the telecom industry. Products based on CGL 2.0.2 began to appear in 2005. Now, following the release of the CGL Requirements Definition version 3.2 early this year, development is underway on many of the CGL capabilities that do not appear in mainline distributions. Multiple providers are offering CGL-based server nodes for service providers to deploy. Most deployments on mobile networks are concentrated at the control layers and some deployments at the application layer, and, as work progresses, one can expect the deployment of CGL to expand to the connectivity layer.

June this year, FSMLabs became the first company to roll out OSDL Carrier Grade Linux 3.2. FSMLabs Pune Development Center upgraded its existing real-time CGL platform resulting in Carrier Grade RTLinux, for the communications equipment OEMs. It offers native support for 64-bit multi-core and multi-processing, standards-based real-time threads programming capability, real-time Ethernet and full support for running Windows XP as a guest operating system.This development has been noted by the industry as a long awaited solution that provides a comprehensive solution for mission critical control and communications projects.

A month later, MontaVista announced its Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 4.0 that is integrated with the Motorola Centellis 3000 communications servers. This offers their joint customers a standards-based platform that will allow them to focus their efforts on developing and deploying next generation applications more quickly. Similarly, Sun Microsystem's latest Netra server, released in April 2006, offers a choice of carrier grade OS-Solaris 10 and MontaVista Linux CGE. Red Hat also plans to capitalize on the latest specification and will release Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.0 early 2007. Currently, RHEL 4.0 includes CGL components of previous specifications. Unisys has also been instrumental in the development of CGL solutions for its hardware and software offerings. Agrawal informs, “Our new CGL solutions offer 99.999 percent availability, serviceability, performance capabilities and compliance with specifications such as JBoss and Apache.” Paul, elaborates on HP's CGL offerings, “Since 2003 HP has offered the Debian HPTE (HP Telco Extensions) service, to provide time-to-market Linux solutions to the telco market. This service provides the ability for specialized CGL solutions for network elements. The types of customers HP is engaging with span the communications, media and entertainment (CME) markets, especially as these markets converge.”

Future Focus
The CGL working group has identified and prioritized requirements for the road ahead in 2006-07. These priorities include Real-time capabilities, testing CGL workloads, device driver hardening and availability, Linux performance and scalability, in addition to further enhancements to security and manageability. Today, the equipment providers are looking to Linux for both embedded support and end-to-end integration, spanning from the Central Office to Linux-based ISP/ASP/Enterprise applications.

"Standardization in telecom market is propelled by CGL" Praveen Sawkar, regional manager – South Asia, Sun Microsystems

“For Linux distribution companies, the task ahead is to get CGL implemented, create awareness in the industry of the level-lplaying field and the cost-benefit that CGL promises to all,” says Mohan. “The wish-list of telecom euipment manufacturers is high and the right way to go ahead is to have phase-wise and frequest releases of CGL for a smooth transition by the carriers and equipment vendors,” he adds. Agrawal joins in, “Telecom equipment providers require a product that is tailored to their market and not just modifications made to a commercial Linux server such as a control blade. This class of CGL must be highly available and robust, based on existing and emerging open standards, have significant third-party software support, and be easily embedded. OSDLs latest version-CGL 4.0 is expected to be available in 2006.”

CGL Grows in India
In India, carriers may not care if their vendors build products using CGL. What matters most to them is whether their equipment vendors can ensure their products meet the reliability and availability standards that carriers require. “The true test of CGL, is to really understand the requirements of the NSPs and NEPs, and see how that matches the requirements in the CGL specification,” says Paul. “CGL is still being tested by the industry to see if it makes sense to commit to a big investment now. It's a matter of when it happens rather than if,” Sawkar adds. OSDL has been very impressed by the number of organizations in India that are involved in the open source movement.

There are some examples of how Linux and open standards are being adopted by telco giants like Bharti Airtel that have migrated their billing operations and back-end servers running Linux. “We are aware that C-DoT is looking to adopt CGL in a big way. The result could be a robust open-standard based platform for call monitoring, real-time billing and back-end applications. This will largely benefit the telecom operators,” says Mohan.

Efforts to standardize software and hardware solutions for telecom devices are fast approaching an inflection point for rapid adoption. “Today there are more choice of distributions available to NEPs. Our only plea to the industry is to have faith in the open source community and believe in its maturity to handle mission-critical applications,” urges Sawkar.

"True test for CGL is to understand the requirements of NEPs and NSPs" Faisal Paul, country manger, High Performance Computing, HP India		"CGL offers vendor independence, cost effectiveness, flexibility and openness" Satish Mohan, head, Engineering, Red Hat India

Open platforms based on industry-defined standards and building practices are the way forward.  The transformation of the telecommunications industry has begun, and CGL is one core component of this makeover.

Malovika Rao
malovikar@cybermedia.co.in