B4N Service Platform Tour
B4N Service Platform is a comprehensive network orchestration and service delivery software platform for multi-vendor physical and virtual network infrastructure that automates service provisioning, simplifies network management and facilitates the smooth transition to service-oriented Infrastructure. The Platform leverages the synergy of SDN, NFV, Lifecycle Service Orchestration, open protocols and APIs. This allows CSPs to get the maximum benefit from these technologies.
Platform components
- B4N SwitchOS – OpenFlow-agent for bare-metal switches and vSwitch for x86 platforms;
- B4N Controller is a high-performance OpenFlow-based SDN controller that addresses the challenges of slow SDN adoption in Service Providers networks;
- B4N Orchestrator is a unified point of management of B4N Service Platform that ensures single point of topology and network services view.
Integration with existent infrastructure
Vast majority of Service Providers have IP/MPLS networks and they will exist in the coming years. SP’s expect to incorporate millions of dollars of equipment and seamlessly migrate their existent network infrastructure avoiding “rip-and-replace” method. That’s why software and hardware vendors need to provide the solution that can be integrated with traditional networks.
B4N Service Platform provides a set of tools to integrate SDN-enabled network segments with existent IP/MPLS networks. A set of Northbound APIs supported – REST, Java, NETCONF
All of the features of traditional networks
B4N Service Platform supports all of the necessary traditional features:
- dot1Q VLAN, VLAN tagging;
- IP/MPLS integration
- Tunnels P2P, P2M, M2M;
- IGMP v2/v3;
- Routing between SDN segments through external router
- Routing protocols
- NAT/PAT;
- NTP, SYSLOG, SNMP etc.;
- And more…
+ New features
Full support of OpenFlow v1.3 provides the following tech benefits:
- Automatic device discovery and topology management, reactive fast failover in case of link failure;
- Proactive provisioning of flow rules which decreases the number of requests between device and SDN-controller and reduces management link requirements;
- Flow map – creation of traffic paths based on business policies and failover paths;
- Network abstraction;
- Network slicing and virtualization
Reduced costs
Customers don’t use most of the software features of network device for which they are forced to pay, and new features and updates take too long. One of the major blocks of SDN is white box switches, which decouples the physical network switch hardware from its network operating system (NOS) software and drives reduced CAPEX. Brain4Net’s solutions limit the need to purchase purpose-built, ASIC-based networking hardware.
B4N Controller enables centralized control of the network and making it easier to design, deploy, manage, and scale networks driving to reduce OPEX.
Network Functions Virtualization
NFV Platform is the second part of the B4N Service Platform that provides network functions virtualization capabilities and ensures high-performance data plane in virtualized environment. It uses a power of OpenStack and Brain4Net’s SwitchOS for x86 servers, VNF management and orchestration software to deliver comprehensive platform that addresses performance and availability challenges.
NFV Platform integrated in OpenStack provides Infrastructure management (VIM) and fully conforms with ETSI Management and Orchestration Framework (MANO).
Delivering Agility
B4N Service Platform uses benefits of synergy between SDN and NFV technologies, Orchestration, open protocols and APIs to deliver network agility and help customers rapidly deploy new applications and services to quickly meet changing business goals.