To meet greater traffic demands and lower operating costs, some of the world’s largest service providers today are looking at open source software to deliver new network services using OpenStack and Linux containers.

In a panel on ‘Rise of Open Cloud Architectures and Over-the-Top Network Services’ at Open Networking Summit 2016, speakers from Arista, Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) and Akanda shared OpenStack implementations for over the top (OTT) network services.

OTT services allow companies to manage multivendor cloud environments and mix and match the network functions as needed. The panel discussed how network functions are abstracted from network hardware and delivered as an open source network service providing examples of dynamic north/south routing, load balancing and security-as-a-service.

Rami Yaron, Co-Chair of Global Marketing Committee at MEF introduced the primary focus of MEF as a standards body accelerating adoption of carrier ethernet in telcos and presented the three major areas of work at MEF:

• Dynamic Network Services

• Lifecycle Service Orchestration

• Open Source Initiatives

Yaron discussed management and control layered reference architecture and the framework that characterizes the domains and management entities required to enable cooperative LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) capabilities for connectivity services.

Fred Hsu, Technical Marketing Engineer, Arista outlined how Arista works with different network controllers using OpenStack Astara as an example. Arista’s approach emphasizes on being agnostic and open for different ways to communicate with and provision the network. As a result, network changes like provisioning or changing switches will not need manual updates, but will be managed through the controller abstraction. This enables configuring and managing Arista switches using standard OpenStack interface.

Mark McClain, CTO of Akanda, outlined the fundamental shift to open source software for over-the-top (OTT) network infrastructure; highlighted that running virtual network functions in the cloud can be 70% cheaper than traditional network hardware and discussed OpenStack Astara features, architectures and how it enables network operation across multiple clouds. He explained how OpenStack Astara can setup and manage virtualized network services from multiple vendors as well as manage bare metal servers and other types of physical infrastructure not traditionally part of an OpenStack solution.

Watch the full talk below: