Ethernity Extends Portfolio for Carrier Grade NFV Deployments

Affordable Carrier Ethernet technology provided by ENET on FPGA makes NFV real

SDN NFV World Congress, stand C8, The Hague, Netherlands > Ethernity Networks (AIM: ENET.L), an innovative technology solutions provider that develops network data processing technology used in high-end Carrier Ethernet applications across the telecom, mobile, security and data centre markets, is to extend the ENET portfolio for support of CSPs business with carrier grade Ethernet requirements, including SLA deterministic performance monitoring, high precision OAM probe methods and hierarchical QoS accuracy.

The ENET portfolio extension is aimed at two different platforms in this arena. The first is a low-end customizable small size SmartNIC platform, based on ENET that, despite the low cost, provides Carrier Ethernet demarcation and IPsec embedded on the new generation FPGA. This is integrated into network edge appliances, such as vCPE, uCPE, and gateways. Supported applications include SD-WAN, vIoT gateways, vBRAS, vFW and others. The second will re-use novel SoC solutions, which already include embedded FPGAs. In this case, ENET Flow Processor would be easily adopted for running directly on a COTS server and delivering carrier grade VNF acceleration for CSP networking infrastructure vRouter and vSwitch, and applications like vFW.

David Levi, CEO of Ethernity, explains: “It became clear that software-only NFV solutions are not sufficient for delivering carrier grade functionality, and a firmware running on FPGA is the only solution accepted by the market to advance deployment of NFV. Adding the required carrier grade functions on top of current NFV solutions is impossible due to the unpredictable behaviour of general purpose CPUs. At the same time, most of modern communication requires predictable traffic and data delivery. Ethernity’s ENET data networking processing firmware on COTS FPGAs brings the required carrier grade set of features.”

Ethernity’s ENET FPGA firmware provides support of classification of millions of flows, millions of counters, OAM/ CFM with integrated packet generator and analyzer, switching, routing, hierarchical traffic management, IEEE 1588 and tunneling offload including MPLS, VxLAN, GRE, GTP. Given this capability, Ethernity is well positioned to complement NFV and SDN with Carrier Ethernet features needed for deterministic performance.

David Levi continues, “According to Forbes, FPGA will be the preferred component to carry onboard data processing, thanks to Intel architecture that embeds FPGA within Xeon processor. In the new generation of COTS servers, acceleration of NFV infrastructure layer will be implemented on FPGAs, which will be integrated directly into standalone servers and rack architectures.”

Acceleration technology that Ethernity has developed delivers a 50x performance improvement and reduces the amount of server resources required for the same tasks. Taking into account SW licensing, hosting, and power consumption costs, Ethernity’s solutions provide tremendous savings in CAPEX and OPEX for service providers, and in some cases, such as a remote cloud, where power consumption is the critical issue, Ethernity offers the only applicable server based architecture.

Ethernity’s experts explain the ENET portfolio in detail at the SDN NFV Congress in The Hague, Netherlands, at the booth C8, between 9 and 13 October. Ken Dennen, the Company’s Senior Director of Business Development in the US will participate in the panel debate “NFV Cost Reduction”, at the BUSINESS & SD-WAN FORUM, October 11 2017.