Standards have long played an important role in the telecommunications industry, but there is increasing recognition that open source software is the key to rapid innovation. This realization is the impetus behind the recently announced plans for ONF and ON.Lab to merge, where the goal is to “simultaneously prototype-and-prove new solutions while laying the groundwork for those solutions to interoperate with each other.” It is this combination of agility and interoperability that the new ONF hopes will provide the best opportunity to grow and accelerate the adoption of SDN.
This is reminiscent of the IETF’s original "rough consensus and running code" mantra, but thanks to SDN, much has changed in how we build networks. This talk outlines our plan to combine the best of ONF and ON.Lab, and our experiences to-date pursuing Software Defined Standards.
