@ATT today is releasing a major hardware abstraction framework for #XGSPON into the #OpenNetworkingFoundation, laying further groundwork for #softwaredefinednetworking control of a common access architecture. The release of #VOLTHA 1.0 -- which is pronounced Volt-HA and stands for #VirtualOpticalLine Terminal Hardware Abstraction -- is a follow-on to hardware specifications AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) already submitted to the Open Compute Project and continues the work of the network operator and its vendor and carrier partners to define the access architecture of the future. It is currently operating in AT&T's Labs and will be in two field trials -- in Atlanta and Dallas -- by year's end. (See AT&T Embracing Software-Defined Access). That future architecture needs to support any media -- fiber, copper or wireless -- and must be software-defined and multivendor, breaking down the current system of managing each access vendor's gear with its own element management and network management systems. As explained by Eddy Barker, AVP for technology design and architecture at AT&T, VOLTHA 1.0 goes a long way in this direction. "What VOLTHA does is allow us to abstract out those common commands that should work with any kind of standard equipment -- some that is software VNFs, [virtual network functions] some is physical hardware," he told Light Reading in an interview. "It essentially allows us to go out and talk to that equipment with its interface type. What this is allowing us to do is create the ecosystem that gives us a software infrastructure layer that is common, and it is open source, although commercialized." Currently VOLTHA 1.0 has the capability of talking to gear from seven different OLT makers to support XGS-PON, he says. VOLTHA can take in standard generic command structures and adapt them to specific silicon in a white box it controls, as well as any software applications.
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