The other day, Dan Pitt, the Presiding Chairman of the ONF (Open Networking Foundation), declared in his participation in the activities held in China that the ONF would collaborate with BII’s Global SDN Testing and Certification Center to hold the ONF Spring PlugFest Test. As the most influential SDN test across the world, the PlugFest will be spontaneously held in China and America. This will be the first time that the ONF PlugFest has ever been held in a country beyond America. 

The ONF PlugFest is a test that is held every six months by the ONF – a leading global SDN organization. In the event, the ONF member companies and SDN device manufacturers from different parts of the world would gather in a relatively neutral environment to test the OpenFlow intercommunity, comformance and application of switchboards and controllers. In the latest PlugFest, a large quantity of network engineers had a collective test on the intercommunity and the comformance of the OpenFlow 1.3 Standard, which not only greatly improved the functions and SDN performance of the devices but also promoted the implementation of the protocols.

 With the rapid development of the SDN technologies, the OpenFlow protocol has been constantly updated and improved, and an increasing number applications and products have been made. The PlugFest can quicken the industry’s understanding of the protocol and improve the protocol standards so that the protocol would become more rational and workable. Meanwhile, it can provide ultimate users with products with intercommunity, accelerate the deployment and application of SDN and OpenFlow, and push forward the development of the industry.

 It is said that the ONF will cooperate with BII’s Global SDN Testing and Certification Center to hold the “Global SDN Technology Conference” in Beijing after the PlugFest, and this will be the first conference oriented by the SDN technologies and application in the world. At the conference, the ONF, the IETF, the OpenDaylight, OpenStack and other international organizations, along with a large number of Chinese scientific institution representatives, will make relevant technical speeches and show application practice. Meanwhile, the ONF and Global SDN Testing and Certification Center will collaboratively release the test results of the PlugFest and application trend reports. With emphasis on such hot topics as the technical development, practical application and industrial direction of Global SDN, they will have in-depth discussions and researches with Google, IBM, Microsoft, HP, China Mobile, China Telecom, HUAWEI and other outstanding operators and manufacturers in China and abroad to advance the development of the industry.

About BII’s Global SDN Testing and Certification Center（www.sdnctc.com）

Beijing Internet Institute – Global SDN Testing and Certification Center is a third-party, neutral SDN testing and certification lab which is committed to the research and test on and the popularization of the Software Defined Network (SDN) technologies. The Center is a member of the ONF as well as the second ONF-authorized SDN testing and certification center in the world. As a third-party, independent testing and certification institution, the Center demonstrates the effectiveness and deployment ability of the SDN products and solutions of the manufacturers through tests and certification. Meanwhile, it would report the problems detected in the tests to relevant standard organizations so as to improve the SDN standards and promote the industrial deployment of SDN. Additionally, the Center enthusiastically collaborates with the ONG Intercommunity Testing Work Group to make the test rules, establish the testing and certification system and improve the technical standards and commercial deployment of SDN.

About the ONF (Open Networking Foundation)（www.opennetworking.org）

Collaboratively established by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo! in 2011, Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is an increasingly strong non-profit organization. At present, it has over 100 member units which make shared efforts to expand the acceptance of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol. The ONF will improve the technologies and standards of SDN and OpenFlow as well as nurture a vigorous market for products, services, applications, clients and terminal users.