Last week was full of activity here at CENGN. Amidst preparations for our 2017 CENGN Summit, we crowned off a year of meetups with the Ottawa Open Source Networking Meetup, which took place on December 6 at the Brookstreet Hotel.

If you’re familiar with CENGN, OPNFV, OpenDaylight and Invest Ottawa, you know we host quarterly meetups which assemble various members of the open source community including industry professionals, students and technology enthusiasts. The purpose of these events is to explore recent developments in the ICT industry, share ideas on how to navigate up and coming technologies, and network with like-minded individuals. Besides, we’re all about learning and collaboration here at CENGN!

A total of about 70 attendees took part in the meetup’s fifth event. As always, there was lots of beer, pizza and networking to open the gathering, which was followed up by some intriguing speakers. CENGN’s Marketing Manager, Rick Penwarden, kicked off the presentations with a year in review of meetups. He gave some statistics to demonstrate how much the open source networking meetup community has grown both locally and globally. Rick concluded by introducing the presenters of the night, CENGN Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, Ochuko Benemoh, and Student Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, Sam Robillard, as well as OpenDaylight Software Developer, Matthieu Cauffiez, from Inocybe Technologies.

First up were Ochuko and Sam who took the audience through the evolution of NFV, from virtual to containerized network functions. Ochuko pointed out some of the shortfalls of virtual network functions (VNFs) including their dependence on NFVi and decoupled management. He indicated that cloud-native infrastructure addresses these issues by providing centralized management and facilitating the running of isolated processes. To illustrate how a cloud-native VNF can be built, Sam stepped in with a live demo which leveraged bleeding edge technologies, Kubernetes, Ligato and FD.io VPP. The demonstration also highlighted how to accelerate development or deployment, as well as simplify operations.

After a short networking break, Matthieu briefly introduced the OpenDaylight (ODL) project and employed traffic engineering use-cases to explain the functionality of 3 node clusters. He also expanded on some of the strategies used to manage ODL clusters in particular scenarios.

During the meetup, attendees were entered into a draw for a chance to win a Merge virtual reality headset. The excitement of the crowd was palpable as the prize was awarded at the end of the event.

A big part of what we do at CENGN is organizing and attending events which encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration among members of the ICT ecosystem. This is entrenched in our mission to create an environment where Canadian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can receive support in the validation and commercialization of their innovative technologies. At open source networking meetups, all organizational barriers are removed and stakeholders from large and small companies learn how to leverage new projects to bridge existing gaps in the telecommunications market. Students also get the opportunity to connect with industry experts, seek career mentorship and learn more about how these technologies are employed in a work setting. In essence, events like these propel CENGN’s vision of strengthening Canada’s leadership in next generation networking.

We would like to thank our fellow event sponsors, OPNFV, OpenDaylight and Invest Ottawa for helping to put together another successful meetup and Inocybe Technologies on providing a OpenDayLight expert to speak at the event. To the Ottawa open source community, get ready for an even more exciting year of meetups which kicks off on March 7, 2018 at the Innovation Centre at Bayview Yards.

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About the Author

CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technology innovation and industry growth through our testbed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. Through our projects, CENGN enables small and medium Canadian Enterprises to test and validate promising technologies, removing barriers to product commercialization and accelerating market growth.

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