Adtran has taken the helm as leader of the Broadband Forum’s new application-level traffic generation testing project, the company announced Monday.
As network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) help the industry transition to virtualized services, new standardized and realistic testing conditions of increasingly complex application-level traffic on networks are needed to verify performance.
“This initiative will benefit service providers, vendors and testing labs by fundamentally allowing them to manage the increasingly complex subscriber traffic on the network as application and service parameters change and evolve,” Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh said in a statement. “The project stream will have far-reaching positive effects on the entire industry and is why the Broadband Forum is championing it. Adtran’s domain experience in helping the industry transition to a more flexible, scalable and secure software-defined access network is certainly appreciated.”
The first initiative’s first project will focus on defining and specifying a model for the generation of test traffic at the application level that simulates real-time domain behavior of multiple applications from multiple subscribers. It will also create a reference implementation for use in test cases in Open Broadband Labs, and other test environments for other industry stakeholders including service providers and vendors.
Initially, the project will address residential high-speed internet access, but business applications could be addressed in a later phase. The first phase of the Application-level Traffic Generation for Advanced Broadband Testing Project Stream is expected to be completed later this year, with additional projects to come in early 2019.
“As carriers invest in upgrading the access infrastructure and look to leverage the service creation capabilities now available, it is critical that testing evolves to keep pace and ensure that the promises of software-defined access are realized,” Adtran Senior Staff Scientist and Project Stream Leader Ken Ko said. “Adtran has played an instrumental role in bringing this work forward and we look forward to collaborating with our peers within the Broadband Forum to advance this important work.”
