Nokia Networks, ARM and Enea have established the OpenFastPath (OFP) Foundation, an initiative that combines the advanced technologies and security features of the telco world with the open source approach of the IT domain.
The development of the telco cloud creates requirements for the IP transport network, as software-defined networking (SDN) solutions rely increasingly on transport layer capabilities.
The OFP Foundation is a non-profit, open source software initiative dedicated to lowering technology barriers and fostering innovation in this area, Nokia said.
It aims to create a vibrant open-source community around a standardized, accelerated TCP/IP stack that provides top performance for SDN-ready network functions. For operator networks, the new fast-path stack means reduced IP latency, higher capacity and thus faster packet forwarding, and lower implementation costs.
In addition to the three founding members, the initiative is supported by several industry players including AMD, Cavium, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard and Linaro.
Nokia said the TCP/IP stack implementation is based on the open-source Free Berkeley Software Distribution (FreeBSD) operating system, and includes User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP).
New functions will be added in the future. It is optimized for OpenDataPlane (ODP) programming interfaces, with a focus on leveraging hardware acceleration through ODP, and will be available for all major processor architectures, including ARM, x86, MIPS and PowerPC, the company noted.