Ethernity Networks to Deliver Efficient NFV Offloading on the All-Programmable Intelligent ACE-NIC Fully Controlled by OpenFlow

Plug-and-play OVS Offloading Supports Agile Custom and Open Access Design  

23 February 2017, Lod, Israel- Ethernity Networks, the innovative provider of Networking System-on-Chip Flow Processors, announces integration of OpenStack and ENET SW on Ethernity’s All-Programmable Intelligent ACE NIC platform that is fully controlled by OpenFlow to deliver programmable and instant VNF offloading, in order to speed and enhance development of NFV-based services and applications. The solution grants Communication Service Providers (CSPs) future-proof NFV deployment without hardware lock-in; improved performance, latency, power and lower TCO. Ethernity Networks will demonstrate VNF offloading at MWC 2017, Stand 2E60, in Barcelona, Spain.

“Programmability of the hardware makes our solution unique and beneficial for CSPs and telecom equipment manufacturers, – explains David Levi, CEO of Ethernity Networks. – Other vendors propose solutions that offload Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) to a proprietary ASIC-based NIC, and their approach eliminates the benefits of fast and flexible NFV concept, bringing CSPs back to the world of proprietary hardware. On the contrary, the approach offered by Ethernity Networks unleashes the potential of NFV and shortens development time from 20 months required for a new ASIC to several weeks. In our further vision, when Xeon processor family will embed programmable logic FPGAs, all offloading will be performed to the embedded programmable logic block within the CPU, therefore the dedicated NIC for offloading will not be required“  – continues David Levi.

Ethernity’s ENET flow processor on the programmable logic and SW application on All- Programmable Intelligent ACE NIC offload VNFs instantly and can be ported onto any programmable logic platform, eliminating hardware vendor lock-in. The solution supports classification of millions of flows, access control lists, state-full flow awareness, deep packet inspection, tunnelling gateway, traffic analysis, performance monitoring, fragmentation, security, virtual routing and switching, all managed through OpenFlow controller running on OVS. The solution can be easily integrated with any management and orchestration system, and more VNFs can be added through OpenStack environment to the stack of accelerated functions in NIC.