ETSI Blog

NFV#41, start of a new decade for ISG NFV

2023-03-31 Posted by Haitao XIA, NFV WG IFA Chair 21059 Hits

In early March, ETSI’s ISG NFV gathered again in ETSI headquarters in Sophia Antipolis. This 41st plenary meeting was collocated with a special event celebrating the 10 years anniversary of this very important Industry Specification Group adding together again many NFV friends from all around the world. (More details of NFV 10th anniversary can be found in the next post: https://www.etsi.org/newsroom/news/2204-etsi-s-conference-for-nfv-10th-anniversary-looks-to-the-future).

The NFV#41 opening plenary was held at the very beginning of the week. ETSI ISG NFV chair Yoshihiro Nakajima started by highlighting the achievements from the NFV#40 - ETSI ISG NFV continues to deliver with very good pace. As well, he took advantage to briefly announce the 10th anniversary event -a good opportunity to not only celebrate the accomplishments that NFV has made in the past 10 years, but also to look forward to the future.

The TSC manager, Ulrich Kleber presented in depth the description of Releases 4 and 5, but also an overview of the Release 6. The updated schedule for those releases was detailed showing our group’s intention to speed up the standards’ creation process and alignment with the industry fast progress in this area.

Diego Lopez, NFV NOC’s chair, started his speech by talking about the recently-published NOC's white paper. He continued by sharing recent operators’ considerations on the relationship between ETSI standards and other cloud-related standards and specifications. Some proposals for future actions were triggered for the ISG including a more direct and dynamic interaction with open-source projects and convergence of K8s and NFV network models.

First “post-kickoff” plenary of ISG THz

2023-03-02 Posted by Mate Boban, ISG THz Vice Chair 12581 Hits

First “post-kickoff” plenary of ISG THz

Mate Boban, ISG THz Vice Chair

ISG THz has had its first “post-kickoff” plenary on Feb 8-10, 2023. Pleasant sunny weather and occasional surprising wind gusts have greeted us in ETSI HQ in Sophia Antipolis; overall, a welcome weather change for most participants hailing from the northern European locations, myself included.

2022: major strides marked on the network automation transformation journey

2023-01-09 Posted by Nurit Sprecher, ISG ZSM Vice Chair 16272 Hits

2022: major strides marked on the network automation transformation journey

Nurit Sprecher, ISG ZSM Vice Chair

Another exciting year in the AI/ML-powered network automation transformation journey is beginning during which the ETSI ZSM (Zero-touch network and Service Management) group will build on the significant achievements of 2022 – in the context of published specifications/reports, cooperation with SDOs, POCs (Proof of Concept) and the strong momentum created in the industry.

First deliverable for NFV Release 5 feature: applying SBA design style to NFV-MANO

2022-12-23 Posted by Janusz Pieczerak, ISG NFV Vice-Chair 16803 Hits

The ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) NFV has published the report ETSI GR NFV-IFA 039 titled " Report on Service Based Architecture (SBA) design ". This document is the first deliverable for the NFV Release 5 feature on “Service based architecture”.

Service based architecture (SBA) is an architectural style that places emphasis on the services provided by individual architectural components. Services are accessible over service interfaces, and are offered by service producers and consumed by service consumers. ETSI GR NFV-IFA 039 provides a feasibility study on the application of SBA design style to the NFV-MANO architectural framework specified in ETSI GS NFV 006. This includes - but is not limited to - studying aspects such as making interfaces independent from reference points, identifying new functionality related to NFV services like service registration or applying generalization for some services.

NFV#40, preparing for NFV next decade by planning Release 6

2022-12-22 Posted by Haitao Xia, NFV IFA WG chair and Ulrich Kleber, NFV TSC chair 20212 Hits

During early winter season, friends from ETSI ISG NFV gathered again at the beautiful riverside of the Thames, to promote the progress of the current active work items and meanwhile, standing at the milestone of 10 years’ point of time, foresee the next decade’s evolution of NFV with Release 6 planning. This meeting hosted by Huawei, was co-located with Layer123 World Congress 2022, which was held in the same building, Queen Elizabeth II Centre from December 5th to 7th. It was a great pleasure to see many familiar old faces who had deeply contributed to ETSI ISG NFV standards.

It was still a very busy and fruitful F2F meeting week with about 50 people’s participation on site. Both the number of delegates and contributions increased steadily from the previous NFV#39 meeting. During the 3 months since NFV#39 meeting, 1 stage 2 ed441 New WID and 1 super WID including 12 stage 3 ed441 specifications were approved, 29 final drafts including stage 2 and stage 3 ed371 specifications were published, and 5 final drafts including NFV006ed441 on MANO Architectural Framework were in ISG approval via remote consensus process. Highlights of NFV#40 meeting include:

5 New WID proposals were approved by the ISG:
- NWI proposal for CIS Cluster Management stage 3
- NWI on NFV-SOL018ed441 (reopening specification for profiling the service interfaces offered by Container Infrastructure Service Management (CISM))
- Maintenance of NFV terminology (NFV003)
- NWI for transforming release description to a group report
- NWI proposal on CCM-VIM Interoperability Interface and Information Model Specification
Second round of feature proposal discussion on NFV Release 6
Attend ETSI prospects workshop in Layer123 event
Joint WG session to share information about Release 4 features tracking, OpenStack Tacker feedback and OAuth 2.0 scope

MEC can serve multiple vertical markets

2022-12-21 Posted by Dario SABELLA, MEC Chair 8513 Hits

Hello folks, I have again to ask apologies for my not-very-frequent blog posts, but really this 2022 is (was) a dense and interesting year! A lot of nice developments and progresses from MEC, as the group is ramping up with Phase 3 work (BTW, stay tuned for the forthcoming announcements on many outstanding deliverables!). In the meantime, I just wanted to inform you that at the MEC#32 plenary the ISG has approved the updated publication in our MEC Leadership webpage (here) with the list of recently appointed LS Officers for the Vertical Industries. They can be our ambassadors, to support on the dialogue with various organizations: in fact, as we know MEC is serving multiple use cases and vertical industries, and ETSI ISG MEC has already established collaborations with a number of external organizations (e.g. automotive), and plans to increase the other domains (e.g. industrial automation, drones, CDN/videostreaming..). Here, I expect nice progresses from the dialogue with these verticals, also related to possible impacts on the Work Item MEC 043 about “Abstracted Radio Network Information for Industries” (the study item will study use cases, key issues and recommendations related to exposing abstracted radio network information for the industries).

Finally, I wanted to exploit the opportunity to wish you all a good Holiday break. Please take care, enjoy a deserved rest, and recharge your batteries, looking forward for a great 2023!

Creating value at the edge of the 5G network with the best of Israeli technology and creativity

2022-10-04 Posted by Nurit Sprecher, ISG ZSM Vice-Chair 9023 Hits

We at Nokia had the pleasure of taking advantage of the MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) global standardization conference that we hosted at our offices in Israel by organizing a unique exposure day on September 18, 2022 for Israeli technology companies which benefit or can benefit from operating in the 5G Edge Cloud ecosystem. To learn about the characteristics of the 5G edge cloud and the value it can create, see my blog on 5G Edge Computing.

To bring everyone up to speed, Shlomi Angi, our CTO of Nokia Israel, provided an informative introduction to 5G and edge cloud.

It was fascinating to hear from representatives of ELTA, Nexar, Eye-Net, Autotalks, Continual, Sensorz, Mov.ai, Onelayer, Qwilt, InceptionXR and Dataloop about innovative services and solutions that they offer in diverse fields.

ETSI IPv6 Enhanced innovation (ISG IPE) starts PoC activities at IPE#08

2022-09-30 Posted by Latif Ladid, Chair of ISG IPE 10550 Hits

Industry Specification Group (ISG) IPv6 Enhanced innovation (IPE) held its 8^th plenary on 6 and 7 September 2022.

The ISG continues to gain momentum in the IP industry, bypassing the 100 supporters including 23 operators, interested in sharing their experiences and defining the future strategies.

Leveraging on the published Group Reports and aiming to stimulate further evolutions, two PoC proposals were adopted:

"SRv6 based 5G Non-Terrestrial Network to provide services with granted SLA, like V2X communication” by CNR-ISTI
“Demonstration of deterministic networking in the Industrial Internet scenario” by China Telecom

6 presentations were given at IPE#08:

Veronica Mckillop, (UK IPv6 Council and guest to ISG#08), presented the UK IPv6 Council history and values.

NFV 39: First completion of the stage-3 specs for containerized VNF lifecycle management by NFV-MANO framework and Preparation for NFV Release-6

2022-09-29 Posted by Yoshihiro Nakajima, ISG NFV Chair 21508 Hits

Over 50 delegates participated to this 39^th meeting of ISG NFV which took place under the beautiful blue skies and very refreshing weather in the south of France. Although some of us were still unable to travel due to constraints caused by COVID-19. The face-to-face meetings resumed at the 39^th ISG meeting, and I am very happy to be back and able to meet with you face-to-face in the ETSI building.

The standardization discussions in each working group during the meeting week were very efficient and steady, taking full advantage of the face-to-face discussions. The number of contributions has increased since the last meeting due to the situation where the confusion by COVID-19 is calming down. Thanks to the standardization delegates for their hard work! Four new Work Items and 22 final drafts were approved and published between the previous meeting and the 39^th meeting.

ETSI IPv6 Enhanced innovation webinars: Global vision and Major industry scenarios

2022-09-12 Posted by Latif Ladid, Chair of ISG IPE 10831 Hits

2 ETSI webinars ‘IPv6 Enhanced Innovation Global Vision’ and ‘Major Industry Scenarios’ took place on September 1st and 2nd respectively. Experts from government institutions, operators, manufacturers and research institutes, shared their vision and the progress made to date within ETSI ISG (Industry Specification Group) IPE (IPv6 Enhanced innovation).

See Webinar Part 1 and Webinar Part 2.

ETSI IPv6 Enhanced innovation (ISG IPE) reinforces its role in industry and reaches 100 members/participants at IPE#07

2022-07-26 Posted by Latif Ladid, Chair of ISG IPE 13692 Hits

Industry Specification Group (ISG) IPv6 Enhanced innovation (IPE) held its 7^th plenary on 28 June 2022.

The current focus of the ISG is twofold: to publish best practices guidelines, to provide and demonstrate PoCs / test case descriptions to support innovation on IPv6 networking topics and validate standards-based approaches, whilst working on “IPv6 networking e2e reference architecture" spanning multiple IETF areas and defined protocols.

ISG IPE is steadily growing its membership passing 100 to become one of the largest ETSI ISGs in terms of members/participants. Many operators including AirLAN, Entel Chile, Megacable Holdings, Personal Paraguay, Sky Italia, Swisscom and Totalplay Comunicaciones recently joined, reaching 23 global operators involved. This testifies the need for operators to define IP transport strategy and confront within the industry on evolution guidelines.

NFV#38, a post-COVID19 pandemic reunion

2022-06-10 Posted by Haitao XIA, NFV WG IFA Chair 21654 Hits

The COVID-19 pandemic stopped ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group (ISG) face-to-face meetings for more than two years. As a result, the ISG blog posts for the plenary sessions were interrupted as well. Although people have been used to regarding online meetings as normal in the past two years, it is time now to call people back to face-to-face meetings with the gradual relaxation of epidemic prevention policies in many countries.

This time, the ETSI ISG NFV met again at NFV#38 from May 30th to June 3rd 2022, in Sophia Antipolis, France. The meeting took a hybrid format, ETSI headquarters hosted 23 delegates from Europe, Asia and North America. Many other delegates participated in the meeting remotely due to their inability to travel. This is the first time that ETSI NFV has returned to a face-to-face meeting after the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020.

ETSI ISG IPE publishes the latest IPv6 Enhanced innovation Report: 5G Transport over IPv6 and SRv6

2022-06-09 Posted by Sebastien Lourdez (Post Luxembourg) and Rapporteur for GR IPE-005 11421 Hits

ETSI has published a new IPv6 Enhanced innovation (IPE) Group Report (GR) “5G Transport over IPv6 and SRv6” (ETSI GR IPE 005). A joint effort by Post Luxembourg, China Telecom, Globe Telecom, the University of Luxembourg and Huawei, this report discusses the role of networking technologies including Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and Segment Routing version 6 (SRv6) in supporting the current and future requirements of 5G networks and applications:

https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gr/IPE/001_099/005/01.01.01_60/gr_ipe005v010101p.pdf.

As 5G networks are deployed worldwide, new services appear and new requirements on the packet transport and backhaul networks arise. Current network architectures may still support the initial demand posed by 5G, yet it is fundamental to make packet networks ready to address the requirements of the coming services. Applications such as Massive Machine Type Communications (MMTC), Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) and distributed Cloud services will push the demand well beyond the present capabilities.

Standardization request in support of safe & trustworthy artificial intelligence

2022-06-01 Posted by Lindsay Frost, OCG AI Chair 9076 Hits

The EUROPEAN COMMISSION (EC) has sent a first draft of a standardization request (SR) to the European Standardization Organizations in support of safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) should be a tool for people and be a force for good in society with the ultimate aim of increasing human well-being. ETSI and CEN, CENELEC have indicated that the work covered by the request falls within their area of competence.

In ETSI, OCG AI will co-ordinate comments on the SR AI while the resulting technical work will be performed in the appropriate technical committees. At this stage, the European Commission does not expect ESOs to develop Harmonised Standards, since the AI Act is not yet adopted by the European Parliament and Council, but the work can contribute later to such necessary Harmonised Standards.

ENI Release 3 underway

2022-03-23 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 10203 Hits

The ENI#21 meeting was online only as many countries were returning and still affected by travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel, and took place on 7-10 March 2022.

20 Industry Specification Group (ISG) members present
82 documents were handled

Let’s remind that the ISG is open to ETSI members and non-ETSI members alike. The different players in the value chain are welcome to join the ISG effort, contribute to the development of these key specifications and demonstrate Proofs of Concepts (PoCs). To join, please contact: isgsupport@etsi.org

The ETSI ENI Industry Specification Group was created in February 2017, today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.

The meeting was productive and achieved progress. The report ETSI GR ENI 012 Reactive In-situ Flow Information Telemetry was published during ENI#21.

An open area is approved, where all stable drafts and previously published deliverables are available.

How much MEC progressed (Spoiler: quite a lot)

2022-03-21 Posted by Dario SABELLA, MEC Chair 9260 Hits

Hello again, and sorry for not writing so frequently. A lot of things happened in these busy months!

ISG MEC have updated some key Phase 2 specifications, and it is continuously progressing on the current Phase 3 work. I can only say “kudos” to the rapporteurs and actual leaders of this tremendous amount of work (you can find more information in the recent ETSI press release, and also details in this short summary.

ENI Release 2

2021-12-15 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 10052 Hits

ENI focuses on improving the operator experience, adding closed-loop AI mechanisms based on context-aware, metadata-driven policies to more quickly recognize and incorporate new and changed knowledge, and hence, make actionable decisions.

ENI has specified a set of use cases and the derived requirements for a generic technology independent architecture of a network supervisory assistant system based on the ‘observe-orient-decide-act’ control loop model. This model gives recommendations to decision-making systems, such as network control and management systems, to adjust services and resources offered based on changes in user needs, environmental conditions and business goals.

Release 2 has specified enhanced use cases, requirements, system architecture, and Proof of Concept (PoC) specifications.

EDF (Electricité de France) Shares its Experience in IPv6 Smart Grid Deployment at ETSI IPE #11 Rapporteur’s Call

2021-12-07 Posted by Latif Ladid, Chair of ISG IPE 13385 Hits

On 16 November ETSI ISG IPE held its 11^th online Rapporteur call with about 30 participants, including delegates from EDF, Cisco, HPE, Huawei, Verizon, China Telecom attending the meeting.

Cédric Lavenu, Expert Research Engineer at EDF (Electricité de France) and Chair of the G3-PLC Alliance Technical Working Group, shared experience with the deployment of the G3-PLC technology, which is designed to natively support IPv6.

In 2011, French DSO (Distribution System Operator) Enedis started its smart grid project with IPv6-based G3-PLC (Power Line Communication) smart meters, called “Linky”. In late 2021, the Linky deployment is almost complete and consists of nearly 35 million smart meters deployed in the low voltage grid, behind one of the 740.000 medium voltage to low voltage transformer substations. This makes Enedis one of the largest IPv6 operators in the world.

MEC towards multi-cloud federation

2021-12-06 Posted by Dario SABELLA, MEC Chair 10080 Hits

A lot of time has passed since my last blog post, sorry for not reaching out to you, folks! Very busy period. Also, a lot of nice things are happening, and ISG MEC is continuously growing in membership, attracting new companies that are actively contributing to the standardization.

Our collaboration with 5GAA (now joining MEC!) is also well established with the identification of two MEC observers, Maxime Flament (CTO, 5GAA) and Luca Boni (Stellantis) who are acting as 5GAA representatives in MEC. The collaboration with Akraino is now also moving forward with the guidance of Jane Shen (Mavenir, Akraino TSC member and ETSI MEC Technical Expert) and Oleg Berzin (Equinix, Akraino TSC Co-Chair and PCEI PTL). Finally, we’ve recently held the 2021 edition of the MEC Hackathon (see results here, published as part of our renewed MEC Wiki page, https://mecwiki.etsi.org/).The MEC Sandbox is continuously updated with new functionalities, also used for the MEC Hackathon.

ENI Release 2 technically complete

2021-09-24 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 12200 Hits

ENI#19 meeting has taken place from 6 to 9 September 2021 and has been performed online because many countries were still affected by travel restrictions or delegates were not allowed to travel. In terms of most relevant figures that denote the heavy work carried out during the meeting, it should be taken into account that:

25 ISG members were present, and
96 documents were handled.

Let’s remind that the Industry Specification Group (ISG) is open to ETSI members and non-ETSI members alike. The different players in the value chain are welcome to join the ISG effort, contribute to the development of key specifications and demonstrate Proofs of Concepts (PoCs). To join, please contact: isgsupport@etsi.org.

The ETSI ISG was created in February 2017 and today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.

Highlights of the meeting

The meeting was productive and progress was achieved in different areas. Deliverable GR ENI 012 on “Reactive In-situ Flow Information Telemetry” was reviewed and declared as stable and it will now proceed to ISG review and approval. It was also decided to re-open the Work Items for the Use cases GS ENI 001 V3.2.1 in release 3 as well as Requirements GS ENI 002 V3.2.1 in Release 3.

GS ENI 005 V2.1.1 on “System Architecture” (Release 2) has completed the Remote Consensus and will be published soon.

The Terminology report GR ENI 004 V2.2.1 is in Remote Consensus until 29 September 2021, after which it is expected to be ratified and published.

An open area where all stable drafts and previously published deliverables are available, was approved.

A recent study at ETSI ZSM addresses potential security threats to zero-touch network and service automation

2021-09-09 Posted by Nurit Sprecher, ISG ZSM Vice Chair 11971 Hits

Zero-touch network and service automation are essential to unleash the business potential of 5G and beyond. The ultimate automation target is a largely autonomous operation driven by high-level policies and rules, enabling self-configuration, self-monitoring, self-healing and self-optimization – without further human intervention.

Automation is not only about technology; it also requires changes in the mindset of people. Trust is a major barrier to adoption and striving to build it requires a continuous learning process. As more automation processes are deployed and operate safely and efficiently, human trust will increase and the requirement for a level of supervision/intervention will diminish. Having native security (e.g. an adaptive secured framework, access control, trustworthiness, data protection) can help to establish confidence and instill trust as the automated processes deliver the intended business outcomes.

The threat surface in the ZSM environment is extensive, firstly due to the openness of the ZSM framework. The framework is modular, extensible and service-based and expands across multiple domains. Its interfaces are open and offer model-driven services. Protecting the interfaces and the management services within and across the domains is essential to ensure the trustworthiness of the ZSM framework.

In addition, the ZSM services can be produced and consumed by new players coming from diverse industries (e.g. government, vehicle industry, energy, transport, etc.). Each player may require or support different trust levels according to its own deployment/execution environments, security policies and regulations. This variety demands flexible and adaptive security control.

ETSI ISG IPE#03: IPv6 Government Policy Speed Up IPv6 Deployment and Enhanced Innovation

2021-07-30 Posted by Latif Ladid, Chair of ISG IPE 11754 Hits

On July 12, ETSI ISG IPE held its 3rd online plenary. Close to 40 participants, including delegates from Cisco, Huawei, Verizon, China Telecom, ARCEP (France), Ofcom (UK), registered for the meeting.

During the Workshop ok IPv6 policy, ARCEP, Ofcom, Verizon and China Telecom introduced the latest IPv6 policies of France, UK, USA and China separately:

Major stride in enabling a broad variety of new premium services at scale and innovative business models

2021-07-26 Posted by Nurit Sprecher, ISG ZSM Vice Chair 11758 Hits

The ETSI ZSM end-to-end network slicing specification has been released.

Network slicing is expected to become a fundamental enabler for value generation: a $300 billion global revenue opportunity by 2025, according to the GSMA.
It has been designed to support a broad variety of use cases (including the unknown) with extreme requirements, providing tailored network capabilities for each individual service. But building a network that supports tens of thousands of individual slices – all of which can be created and set up, operated, scaled, assured to meet each slice’s service-level agreement (SLA), and torn down at a moment’s notice – presents several challenges.

The recently released ETSI ZSM specification on closed-loop enablers provides a significant boost for enabling full end-to-end network and service automation

2021-07-13 Posted by Nurit Sprecher, ISG ZSM Vice Chair 14604 Hits

The accelerated worldwide deployment of 5G networks poses a significant challenge to the way networks and services are created, orchestrated and managed. Full end-to-end automation becomes crucial for the delivery, dynamic adaptation and continuous assurance of the highly diverse services – each with its own broad range of requirements – while still ensuring economic sustainability. In addition, the network’s performance, coverage and capacity should be constantly assured to satisfy the requirements of the active services.

ENI#18: ENI finalization of Release 2, initialization of Release 3

2021-06-29 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 11269 Hits

The ENI#18 meeting was online only as many countries were affected by travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel. It took place at 7-10 June 2021.

26 ISG members all of which were present.
Operators: Telefonica, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, NTT, Deutsche Telekom, and Portugal Telecom.
115 documents were handled.

The ETSI ENI Industry Specification Group was created in Feb 2017, today members come from operators, vendors and research institutes all over the world.

MY FIRST 100 DAYS AS NEW MEC CHAIR

2021-06-10 Posted by Dario SABELLA, MEC Chair 11246 Hits

Last March 2021, I’ve started my new journey in ETSI MEC, taking over the Chair position from my friend Alex Reznik (HPE). Sure, of course I’m not a “beginner” in this group (as most of you who know me can appreciate that I’m there in the MEC Leadership Team since the beginning of the Phase 1!). Nonetheless, given the great work done together in these amazing years in collaboration with all MEC stakeholders, I’m grateful of the trust of many companies who elected me and expressed their warm support in my new role.

ETSI ISG IPE: Off to a good start

2021-05-19 Posted by Will Liu, ISG IPE Vice-Chair 11461 Hits

Welcome to the ISG “IPv6 Enhanced innovation” (IPE) blog, keeping you updated on IPv6 enhanced innovation work ongoing at ETSI.

The ISG IPE Kick-off meeting took place in January 2021 with the creation of 5 initial Work Items and the appointment of a leadership team.

What happened at the NFV Evolution virtual event?

2021-05-12 Posted by Bruno Chatras, ETSI NFV Chair 22888 Hits

A virtual event on NFV Evolution organized by ETSI in partnership with Telecom TV and sponsored by Huawei was held from 19 to 21 April 2021. The objective of the event was for the ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group (ISG) to get feedback from the industry on implementation experience with the ISG’s specifications and on future topics to be addressed in next specification releases. The event was also an opportunity for the participants to get updated on ETSI NFV’s activities, deliverables and future plans, as well as on the progress made in open source communities with regards to the convergence with the ISG’s standards. The event was held in parallel with the 34th meeting of the ISG. The choice was not accidental as this was the meeting where the ISG launched the process for collecting proposals from its members and participants on the features to be addressed within the scope of its next specification release (NFV Release 5).

The event programme featured six original presentations selected from the responses received to an open call, addressing deployment experience, new use cases and technical requirements:

Mr. Yuya Kuno, NTT DOCOMO, presented DOCOMO’s experience in developing and operating NFV and future expansion.
Mr. Pierre Lynch, Keysight Technologies and Ms. Silvia Almagia, ETSI CTI Technical Expert jointly presented “Measuring NFV Evolution: ETSI NFV Plugtests”.
Mr. Borja Nogales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, presented “An NFV system to support service provisioning on UAV platforms: a walkthrough on implementation experience and standardization challenges”.
Dr. Lingli Deng, China Mobile, presented “From Orchestration Towards Automation”
Dr. Haopeng Zhu, Huawei Technologies Co., presented “Towards the future of NFV: Edge-native, Containerization, Networking-NFV convergence”.
Mr. Gianpietro Lavado, Whitestack, presented about the advances in deployment of standardized NFV Orchestration through ETSI OSM.

ENI#17: Winding up Release 2, scoping release 3

2021-03-19 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 14007 Hits

The ENI#17 meeting on 8-11 March 2021 was “online only” due to travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel.

26 were present, 29 were registered,
Operators were present from: China Telecom, China Mobile, TIM, Deutsche Telekom, and Portugal Telecom, Also, NTT, Telefonica & Vodafone (messaging the Chair),
121 documents were handled.

The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. The meeting progressed the work-items to stable output on the deliverables Draft report ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms planned to be approved at the end of March 2021. Report ENI 008 Intent aware architecture is in publication, the Group Report on the evaluation of categories report ENI 010 is published as v1.1.1 describing measures of automation of the Classes published in 2019 in report ENI 007 v1.1.1.

An open area is approved, for all stable drafts and previously published deliverables are available.

4 amazing years as MEC Chair

2021-03-03 Posted by Alex Reznik, Former Chair of MEC ISG 11887 Hits

Last week I transitioned the position of Chair of ETSI MEC over to Dario Sabella from Intel. Having spent four amazing years serving as the Chair of this group, I am happy to see it in such good hands. For years Dario has been a significant contributor and an enthusiastic advocate of our work. He’s been the driving force behind many of our Hackathons. Moreover, Intel’s support and commitment for the group is a strong signal of our importance. The best days for MEC are in the future and this is where all of us should look. Still, leaving a position such as this, one does tend to reflect on one’s years of tenure and so for my last blog as Chair I am going to do just that.

ETSI NFV Release 3: update on protocols and data model specification outcomes

2021-01-21 Posted by Joan Triay, ETSI NFV Technical Manager and Zarrar Yousaf, ETSI NFV SOL working group Chair 27307 Hits

2020 turned out to be an unexpected year, with the COVID19 pandemic adversely impacting the “normal” day-to-day lives of humans across the globe. However, even during this turn of events and unforeseen testing times, communication networks demonstrated their efficacy in keeping people and businesses connected. More concretely, Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) proved its feasibility by enabling the operators to gracefully manage high demand for network connectivity.

Undaunted by this situation, the technical experts at the ETSI ISG NFV continued to work tirelessly developing and delivering specifications that help get and keep “everyone/everything connected”. And the hard work paid off as ETSI ISG NFV delivered during the second half of 2020 new and updated "protocols and data model" (stage 3) specifications incorporating NFV Release 3 features.

The experts in the Solutions (SOL) working group completed stage 3 work on a subset of the NFV Release 3 features. One of the first features that was already finalised in 2019 was "Management of NFV-MANO" (FEAT11) with the release of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 009 V3.3.1. This document specifies a set of RESTful protocols and APIs that can be used to manage different aspects regarding configuration, performance, fault and logging of entities implementing specified NFV-MANO functional blocks. The defined APIs leveraged the same RESTful principles used for NFV-MANO APIs in Release 2, i.e., the ones used for managing VNF instances, NS instances and on-boarding VNF Packages, NSDs and other artefacts.

New outcomes on the development of NFV-MANO APIs continued in 2020 with the release of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 011 V3.3.1, which specifies NFV-MANO APIs related to management across "NFV-MANO administrative domains" (FEAT08). These APIs are produced by the NFVO and allow different administrative domains to communicate over the Or-Or reference point to help coordinate the management of NS instances deployed on their respective administrative domains. The Or-Or reference point is set in between NFVO instances placed on different administrative domains, as specified in ETSI GS NFV-IFA 030. For instance, the APIs of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 011 enable reusing an NS instance deployed on a domain A and nest it into another NS instance deployed on a domain B. Due to the functional similarities with existing capabilities offered by the NFVO to other systems such as OSS/BSS, most of the APIs are identical or based on those specified in ETSI GS NFV-SOL 005.

ENI#16 - Significant progress with approval of much of Release 2

2020-12-18 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 17463 Hits

The ENI#16 meeting on 7-10 December 2020 was "online only" due to travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel.

29 delegates were registered and 29 were present
Operators were present from: China Telecom, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT, Portugal Telecom, Telefonica and TIM
Government Ministry Institutes being members from Germany, China, Japan and South Korea
163 documents were handled

The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. The work-items were progressed to stable output on the deliverables Draft GR ENI 008 on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity and Draft GR ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms both planned to be approved at the end of December. Approval as final draft on the evaluation of categories Draft GR ENI 010 describing measures of automation of the Classes published last year in GR ENI 007 v1.1.1.

OS container object model and management interfaces: The first set of Cloud-Native VNF orchestration specifications

2020-11-10 Posted by Jörg Aelken, Rapporteur of ETSI GS NFV-IFA 040 27645 Hits

The ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) NFV has published the initial release of ETSI GS NFV-IFA 040 titled "Requirements for service interfaces and object model for OS container management and orchestration specification". This document is the first normative specification delivered for the NFV Release 4 feature on “Cloud-native VNFs and Container Infrastructure management”. The specification propagates the recommendations from the study in ETSI GR NFV-IFA 029 and formally specifies the new functions required for the management and orchestration of OS containers, the Container Infrastructure Service Management (CISM) and the Container Image Registry (CIR). The CISM is responsible for maintaining the containerized workloads while the CIR is responsible for storing and maintaining information of OS container software images.

To enable a consistent and generic system for the management of containerized VNFs, ETSI GS NFV-IFA 040 specifies an abstract NFV object model for OS container management and orchestration, including their relationship to the core information models of NFV-MANO. The abstract NFV objects are also expected to be used in specifications profiling APIs of de-facto standard solutions, to map the abstract NFV objects to objects of the specific de-facto standard solution. One of the introduced abstract NFV objects is the Managed Container Infrastructure Object (MCIO), an object managed and exposed by the CISM, characterized by the desired and actual state of a containerized workload. Managed objects from Kubernetes^® such as Deployment or Service are examples which map to an MCIO. Another new NFV object is the Managed Container Infrastructure Object Package (MCIOP), a hierarchical aggregate of information objects including declarative descriptors and configuration files for one or multiple MCIOs. Helm charts as specified by CNCF^® are an example which maps to an MCIOP.

Insights on API conformance testing for NFV-MANO

2020-11-03 Posted by Pierre Lynch, NFV TST WG Chair and Rapporteur of TST010 23819 Hits

ETSI GS NFV-TST 010 (TST010) is a published API conformance testing specification for NFV Management and Orchestration (NFV-MANO) APIs. Specifically, it contains conformance tests for the APIs used on the following reference points:

Os-Ma-Nfvo, defined by ETSI GS NFV-SOL 005 (SOL005)
Ve-Vnfm, defined by ETSI GS NFV-SOL 002 (SOL002)
Or-Vnfm, defined by ETSI GS NFV-SOL 003 (SOL003)

The latest released version of TST010 is Version 2.6.1 (available from the ETSI website), which means that it supports the corresponding 2.6.1 versions of the above SOL documents (i.e. SOL02, SOL003 and SOL005). Version 2.4.1 is also available, and it similarly corresponds to the 2.4.1 versions of the SOL documents. This will always be the case going forward as well: the TST010 version will always match the corresponding version of the SOL documents specifying the reference points being tested.

ENI is progressing with 15th meeting & Technology Workshop on AI policy

2020-10-14 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 18221 Hits

The ENI#15 meeting took place from 14-17 September 2020 "online only" as many countries were affected by travel restrictions or delegates not allowed to travel.

30 were present, 33 were registered
Operators included: Telefonica, TIM, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT and Portugal Telecom
Government Ministry Institutes members came from Germany, China, Japan and South Korea
134 documents were handled

The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress. It progressed the work-items drafting on the deliverables "draft GR ENI 008" on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity and "draft GR ENI 009" on Data Processing mechanisms, both planned to be approved in December. Major progress on the evaluation of categories "draft GR ENI 010" was made discussing measures of automation of the classes published last year in GR ENI 007 V1.1.1. The new draft ENI 022 on iFIT in-situ reactive telemetry framework was progressed well.

New release: Data models for resource templates to foster interoperability between VIMs and NFVOs/VNFMs

2020-08-19 Posted by Hiroshi Dempo, ETSI GS NFV-SOL 014 rapporteur, NEC 20385 Hits

The ETSI NFV Industry Specification Group (ISG) has completed the initial release of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 014 titled "YAML data model specification for descriptor-based virtualised resource management". The specification focuses on a set of YAML-based data models used between NFVO and VIM (Or-Vi reference point), and also between VNFM and VIM (Vi-Vnfm reference point) for exchanging information on virtualised resources and their management. The work item and resulting document addresses specification gaps in the area of virtualised resource management and aim at enhancing the integration and interoperability of VNFM and NFVO with VIM solutions.

In the ETSI NFV specifications, interfaces and information models for the Or-Vi and Vi-Vnfm reference points have been specified in ETSI GS NFV-IFA 005 and ETSI GS NFV-IFA 006 respectively. Based on those specifications, the objective of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 014 is to define a set of YAML-based data models for representing information exchanged over these reference points as input and outputs to perform virtualised resource management. The descriptor-based virtualised resource management assumes a type of VIM which supports templates declaring parameters, requirements, lifecycle and composition of sets of virtualised resources.

End-To-End Management and Orchestration procedures: The ultimate step towards interoperability (Publication of SOL016 – MANO Stage 3 procedures)

2020-08-19 Posted by Rajavarma Bhyrraju, WG IFA Vice Chair 26763 Hits

Following intense technical work, ETSI NFV has just released ETSI GS NFV-SOL 016, the first stage 3 specification of NFV-MANO procedures in NFV Release 2 addressing interactions across several NFV-MANO functional blocks and/or interfaces. This specification builds on the ETSI NFV-MANO API specifications ETSI GS NFV-SOL 005, ETSI GS NFV-SOL 003 and ETSI GS NFV-SOL 002 which have defined the mandatory and optional operations and data attributes per individual NFV-MANO interface. As these specifications are focusing on individual interfaces, it is left up to the operator or the integrator to stitch together the information across different NFV-MANO interfaces to realize the NFV-MANO procedures involving interactions across several NFV-MANO functional blocks and/or interfaces, also referred to as end-to-end procedures. This might lead to various interpretations of how the end-to-end NFV-MANO procedures should work. ETSI GS NFV-SOL 016 defines procedures for selected key NFV-MANO procedures with the target to improve interoperability end-to-end.

Convergence in the MEC ecosystem

2020-08-19 Posted by Alex Reznik, Chair of MEC ISG 15223 Hits

I’ve been looking over some of my previous entries lately and noticed how many were touching on the subject of interaction between ETSI MEC and other standard and open source bodies. The subject is indeed still one of significant interest and the question about “fragmentation” and “competition” is one that comes up much too frequently.

Those of you who’ve read some of my previous musings on this subject might recall my position on this subject. Standards and open source serve very different functions: standards ensure interoperability between components where it may be necessary and open source provides implementations of such components. As such, the two types of bodies are highly complementary. Moreover, I’ve also maintained that even in the standards space itself little duplication of effort exists around MEC. Alas, hard evidence to support my view was previously missing – but that is changing fast.

Mitigating the Cybersecurity Threats Which e-Voting Faces

2020-07-10 Posted by Tony Rutkowski, e-Voting Cybersecurity Group Technical Lead, ETSI 7798 Hits

Over the past few decades, many different kinds of electronic voting systems have emerged to assist elections workers and voters in making elections systems easier and faster. Trusted, paper-based voting system modules for keeping pollbooks, authenticating voters, receiving elections notices and ballots, and casting and counting them have been in many places around the world been augmented with computer-based systems. In a few places, some experiments with network-based balloting have also occurred.

The experiences with these electronic augmentations have also revealed their substantial vulnerabilities and attack vectors that place the integrity of voting systems at risk, and a newfound realization that paper-based systems have enduring value. The ETSI e-Voting cybersecurity work item is intended to develop a framework for understanding and assessing the use of these electronic augments, the associated treats and risks, and provide best-practice guidelines for reducing those risks. A common consensus at the outset is that significant, enduring risks and corruptibility of network based or connected e-Voting exist, and its use should not be encouraged for anything with legal significance.

New work on Reactive In-situ flow information Telemetry

2020-07-06 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 15772 Hits

The ENI#14 online meeting took place on 22-25 June 2020.

The meeting was very productive and achieved significant progress with 2nd release drafts.

An open area was approved, for all stable drafts and previously published deliverables. The meeting continued drafting within the work items for the next versions on ENI use cases, requirements and Terminology for Release 2.

Significant progress was made on the learning techniques and the definition of autonomy for AI in ENI 005 work-item RGS/ENI-0016.
The meeting progressed the work-items drafting on the deliverable of Draft GR ENI 008 on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity.
Draft GR ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms was well progressed in the aspects of data format, data sharing, data management, network telemetry and resource telemetry, etc.
Major progress on the evaluation of categories Draft GR ENI 010 was made discussing a five-dimensional system of quantification of the Classes published last year in GR ENI 007.
The Draft ES 011 work-item DGS/ENI-0021 on mapping to 3GPP and ONAP was progressed.
A new work item (ENI-0022) on In-situ flow information Telemetry (iFIT) Framework was started: Initial draft with skeleton was approved as WI baseline V0.0.1, Key concepts/terminology were approved.

The meeting also approved to send a Liaison Statement to 3GPP S2 & S5 to build a liaison relationship. The LS introduced ETSI Industry Specification Group ENI’s work and asked for further collaboration highlighting ENI 001, ENI 005 and ENI 011.

TC INT working group INT AFI published White Paper in frame of 5G PoC Project

2020-06-16 Posted by Dr. Tayeb Ben Meriem (Orange), Dr. Muslim Elkotob (Vodafone) 9757 Hits

The 5G Proof of Concept (PoC) Project of ETSI WG TC INT AFI published its White Paper #6 “Generic Framework for Multi-Domain Federated ETSI GANA Knowledge Planes (KPs) for End-to-End Autonomic (Closed-Loop) Security Management & Control for 5G Networks/Services”.

Rationale

The 5G PoC White Paper #6 has now been published, and its purpose is to lay the groundwork for the standardization of “A Generic Framework for Multi-Domain Federated ETSI GANA (Generic Autonomic Network Architecture) Knowledge Planes (KPs) for End-to-End Autonomic (Closed-Loop) Security Management & Control for 5G Networks/Services”.

The White Paper is accessible for download via the INT Wiki.

ETSI TC INT has established that E2E Autonomic (Closed-Loop) Service and Security Assurance shall be achievable through the Federation of GANA Knowledge Planes (KPs) (as Platforms) that implement components for Autonomic Management and Control (AMC) intelligence for specific network segments and domains. While such an E2E Federation of KP Platforms for multiple network segments (as domains) has to be primarily considered within a single network operator administrative domain, the E2E Federation of KPs may be extended to even span multiple network operator or enterprise network administrative domains.

TC INT and TC MTS published White Paper on Testing of AI and AI in Test Systems

2020-04-28 Posted by Tayeb Ben Meriem (TC INT), Andreas Ulrich (TC MTS) 9283 Hits

5G PoC White Paper: AI in Test Systems, Testing AI Models and ETSI GANA Model's Cognitive Decision Elements (DEs)

Rationale

The purpose of this 5G Proof of Concept (PoC) White paper #5, is to lay the groundwork of the standardization that has been jointly launched recently in ETSI by TC INT and TC MTS with the support of the Centre of Testing and Interoperability (CTI) on the topic of “Testing of AI and AI in Testing Systems” that will address the various aspects linked to this topic through the development of ETSI assets such as specifications to be used by the industry.

These specifications will include the definition of metrics pertaining to specific classes of AI models that can be targeted for testing and assessment, for such metrics definitions are currently missing in the work being done in the various standardization groups.

Moreover, the specifications will close a gap also identified in the 5G PoC White Paper #5 on the need for a “Test & Certification Framework for AI Models in AMC” (Autonomic Management & Control) to support the Industry in implementing and achieving Multi-Layer AMC for Autonomous Networks being specified by ETSI and other Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) / Fora.

It is noticeable that the framework being proposed by ETSI TC INT is aligned with the European Commission’s White Paper, published on 19 February 2020, on “Artificial Intelligence: a European approach to excellence and trust” that emphasizes the need for:

A Regulatory Framework
The Creation of an AI Testing Center, and
The Creation of a Certification Center

Looking at the topic of “Testing of AI and AI in Test Systems” as a journey, ETSI TC INT has identified, already in 2015, the need for a Test & Certification Framework for Adaptive Networks and their Associated Autonomic Functions using AI Components and published, in 2016, EG 203 341 “Approaches for Testing Adaptive Networks” to anticipate and prepare the Industry’s readiness in implementing Multi-Layer Autonomic (AMC) frameworks for evolving and future networks.

ENI#13 Progressing Release 2 and ETSI / ITU-T workshop “ENI-Machine Learning in communication networks”

2020-03-31 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 16316 Hits

Due to confinement and travel restrictions, the ENI#13 meeting was successfully organized online only on 17-20 March 2020.

32 were present including 8 operators
4/5 Government Ministry Institutes are members: China, Japan and South Korea
133 documents were handled

A workshop “ENI-Machine Learning in communication networks” was organized on 16 March between two ETSI ISGs, namely ENI and SAI (Securing AI), and ITU-T’s Q20/13 and FG ML5G “Machine Language 5th Generation”, on AI/ML. This workshop was instrumental in enabling synergies between ETSI and the ITU-T in this field and to better understand the needs of industry. ETSI ISG ENI will send the template of ENI Use Cases to the ITU-T groups by liaison for their reference in future work.

As for the meeting, it was very productive and achieved significant progress. After the publication of the approved ENI 006 PoC framework revision, all PoCs will be required to show interworking on an external reference point. The meeting also progressed on the draft reports GR ENI 008 on Intent Aware Network Autonomicity and GR ENI 009 on Data Processing mechanisms. Major progress on the evaluation of categories in Draft GR ENI 010 was made discussing a five dimensional system of quantification of the Classes published last year in GR ENI 007.

Significant progress was made on the learning techniques for AI in the ongoing revision of ENI 005. An open area was also approved for all stable drafts and previously published deliverables. Attendees continued drafting revisions of the next versions on ENI use cases, requirements and Terminology for Release 2.
In addition, we started working on Evaluation of the AI Network Configuration and Mapping of operational systems to ENI architecture. ISG ENI is now progressing into the 2nd Release.

Steady progress on Release 3 and Release 4 work

2020-03-16 Posted by Joan Triay (ISG NFV Technical Manager, DOCOMO Euro-Labs) 30381 Hits

The ETSI NFV community met for its twenty ninth plenary meeting (NFV#29) from 17 to 21 February at the Home of NFV, ETSI Headquarters, in Sophia-Antipolis, France. This time, the plenary meeting took place amidst the unfortunate situation, the Coronavirus outbreak that has hit so many countries and seriously impacted standardization work, and life in general almost worldwide. Consequently, some of our delegates were not able to travel and attend the meeting physically. Our best wishes to all of you all around the world who have been impacted by the outbreak, "wishing you a good and quick recovery".

Addressing the impact of this outbreak on the handling of the plenary meeting, ETSI provided outstanding support, as usual, by enabling remote access for participants that could not travel. Furthermore, the ISG and working group officials made a very good job of adapting the schedule and working procedures to facilitate the active participation and contributions of the remote delegates. As for those of us that had the opportunity to attend the plenary physically, ETSI had provided a very useful new facility: the delegates participating F2F could check-in for the first time by scanning their meeting QR code using a check-in station in the ETSI lobby.

All in all, despite the circumstances, the plenary meeting was once again a success. All working groups made steady progress in most of the work items that are currently being developed as part of the Releases 3 and 4.

ETSI TR 103 626 published - an instantiation & implemention of GANA Model

2020-03-04 Posted by Dr. Tayeb Ben Meriem, ETSI TC INT Vice Chair 12474 Hits

ETSI TC INT has published ETSI TR 103 626 on 17 February 2020. An Instantiation and Implementation of the Generic Autonomic Network Architecture (GANA) Model onto Heterogeneous Wireless Access Technologies using Cognitive Algorithms.

This Technical Report provides a mapping of architectural components for Autonomic Network Management & Control developed/implemented in the European Commission (EC) funded WiSHFUL and ORCA Projects to the ETSI TC INT AFI Generic Autonomic Networking Architecture (GANA) model - an architectural reference model for autonomic networking, cognitive networking and self-management.

The mapping pertains to architectural components for autonomic decision-making and associated control-loops in wireless network architectures and their associated management and control architectures.

ENI#12 with Proof of Concept Demos, interesting discussions and 110 documents handled

2020-01-20 Posted by Dr Ray Forbes, ETSI ISG ENI Chair 18765 Hits

ETSI hosted ENI#12 meeting and Proof of Concept (PoC) Demos in its headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, France, on 9-12 December 2019. The meeting can be summarized as follows:

34 delegates present F2F out of 41 registered, (Vodafone & NTT participating with email)
7 operators represented, from Asia and Europe
110 documents handled

On 9 & 10 December there were demos of most of the completed and progressing PoCs PoC#1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7. This generated discussions and interest with other ETSI members and participants of meetings in the ETSI HQs at the same week. Especially, delegates from Industry Specification Group (ISG) Zero-touch network and Service Management (ZSM) and Technical Committee (TC) SmartM2M.

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