NEC announces first SDN controller with OpenFlow 1.3 standard

IRVING, USA: NEC Corp. of America (NEC), a leading provider and integrator of advanced IT and communications solutions, and a pioneer in OpenFlow-based Software Defined Networking (SDN), announced the general availability of Version 5 of its award-winning ProgrammableFlow Networking Suite, including the ProgrammableFlow PF6800 Controller, which is the first generally available SDN controller supporting the OpenFlow 1.3 standard.

The OpenFlow 1.3 specification provides broader interoperability and features that give customers more choice when they are designing networks. Added flexibility helps customers avoid vendor lock-in and lets them take advantage of simple, scalable, secure application-aware networking.

"OpenFlow 1.3 is a vendor-neutral, production-quality standard that includes input from a wide range of vendors to define a clean interface between switch and controller functions. This process encourages a single API to drive commercialization," said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation.

Working with its service provider and enterprise customers, NEC designed Version 5 of the ProgrammableFlow networking suite to:

* Support more interoperability with other OpenFlow devices, even when both OpenFlow 1.0 and 1.3 versions are present in a network.

* Double the scalability of the previous controller, now supporting up to 10,000 ports or 200 physical switches per controller (compared to 100 switches previously).

* Use IP Multicast, for the first time in an OpenFlow environment, to deliver a single stream of information simultaneously to multiple users. This capability reduces network congestion by streamlining traffic and maximizing resource usage.

* Interoperate with the new networking functions in OpenStack's Grizzly release. The updated ProgrammableFlow OpenStack API brings a scalable, high performance, multi-tenant SDN infrastructure to OpenStack cloud deployments.