Last week, CENGN, Invest Ottawa and The Linux Foundation hosted an Open Source Networking (OSN) Meetup at Bayview Yards. The OSN Meetups are free events that serve to bring members of the ICT community together to learn about new technologies and trends within the open source networking space.

All are invited to stay informed on what is happening in the sector and take part in what is an excellent networking opportunity.  Pizza, beer and pop are definitely a perk to the many students who frequent the meetups, but also the conversations on the personal experiences working on open source projects brings in a spirit of collaboration and entrepreneurial learning before the speakers take the floor.

Presentations generally discuss topics like cloud technology, data analytics, Software Defined Networks (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Management and Orchestration (MANO) and accelerating network infrastructures. As one of the largest proponents of the open source community, The Linux Foundation graciously sponsors these events with CENGN so the regional community of network engineers can get together and learn from their fellow engineers on the latest challenges and opportunities facing network technologies.

The meetups focus on the networking projects supported by the Linux Foundation such as OPNFV, FD.io, ONAP, OpenDaylight, PNDA, SNAS, and Tungsten Fabric. This meetup’s speakers arrived at the start of the event at 5:00pm, which allowed them to speak to all the other attendees about their areas of expertise before taking centre stage.

The event’s presenters were Johanne Mayer, director of MayerConsult and Mark Beierl, who is a solutions architect at VMWare.

Johanne was the first to present, speaking on ‘Standards Support for Network as a Service (Naas)’. According to Johanne, in order for NaaS providers to remain relevant in the current market landscape, they must become speedier and more agile. This means that these service providers will need a new operating model that includes new processes, as well as automation and the implementation of standard APIs at the supplier level. Johanne explained that due to the requirement for this new operating model and the resulting need for standard APIs, there are various Standards Organization Initiatives that operate within the open source space to support NaaS.

Mark also spoke on standards, discussing how the Common NFVi for Telco Taskforce (CNTT) and the OPNFV have come together to benefit the ICT sector through common NFV infrastructure (NFVi) frameworks. The CNTT has been busy creating a common NFVi reference model and reference architecture. With these reference models, OPNFV are developing a verification program so both VNFs and NFVis can be modeled and tested for compatibility with these standard reference models. These references will accelerate deployment across an entire telecommunications stack. The roll out of the verification program is not quite there yet, but once launched it will no doubt have a significant impact on improving the ease of implementation of VNFs on networks.

CENGN is always excited to be a part of these meetups and promote the open source community. Innovation is born from the sharing of knowledge, which can help benefit the entirety of the ICT sector. These meetups also provide a unique opportunity for students and network engineers to get to know each other and build connections, which can lead to new jobs and new ideas being shared. A big thank you to the Linux Foundation for sponsoring and Invest Ottawa for hosting the event.  Interested in seeing the slides for these presentations?  Join the Ottawa Open Source Meetup to gain access to the slides, and register for the next event:

Fall is a very busy season for us! Check out which events we are attending through the button below and come say hello!

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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