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CNTi Proposal

CNTi Proposal

Mentorship CNTi Proposal

Title

Enhancing the CNTi Workload Suite and Extending Platform Support to ARM64 and macOS

Status

PENDING TAC APPROVAL

Difficulty

MEDIUM

Funding

FUNDED

Description

Cloud Native Telecom Initiative (CNTi) aims at accelerating the adoption of Cloud Native technology for networking to meet the needs of both vendors and service providers while avoiding fragmentation and creating a unified conformance program. For more insights, you can listen to “Layer 8: Voices of Open Networking,” where Marc Price of MATRIXX Software and Philippe Ensarguet of Orange introduce CNTi, discuss its origins, and highlight its vendor-neutral best practices and test suites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1ByxEMNbrM.

The internship will focus on addressing two key CNTi challenges :

  1. Enhancing the CNTi Workload Suite:
    While the CNTi Cert suite is actively used by downstream projects like Sylva and free5GC, there are over 70 additional workload tests that need to be improved. This includes hardening, possibly rewriting, and ensuring they are well-covered by GitHub workflows. The initial steps involve evaluating the quality of these tests, fixing flaky or destructive tests, and verifying them via relevant GitHub workflows. The final goal is to recommend these tests to the downstream projects like Sylva and free5GC.

  2. Supporting ARM64 architecture :
    While ARM64 is gaining traction in the industry, the project will involve building and automatically delivering ARM64 binaries as part of official releases. Additionally, it will support testing cloud-native functions deployed in ARM64 clusters. This will require creating testing containers for ARM64, all built through GitHub Actions.

Depending on progress, creating a CNTi GitHub badge could also be an interesting and valuable task, providing both learning opportunities and industry interest.

Additional Information

Learning Objectives

  • Develop advanced skills in Kubernetes and GNU/Linux, that are in high demand in the industry

  • Learn Cloud-native best practices to design, develop, and deploy scalable and resilient network functions in Kubernetes clusters

  • Improve programming skills to write efficient, clean, and maintainable code across different architectures

  • Gain a strong understanding of open-source workflows and processes

  • Acquire true opensource experience that adds significant value to a CV

  • Enhance English communication skills for various contexts such as meetings, blog posts, conference talks, etc.

Expected Outcome

  • Provide a comprehensive overview of the workload suite's quality, including identifying flaky or failing tests, and understanding the effort needed to fix or improve them

  • Multiple pull requests focused on hardening the code, particularly for the Workload suite

  • Implementation of new GitHub Actions to verify the Workload suite

  • Development of workflows that cover the architecture matrix

  • Publication of new LFN blog posts to share insights and updates

Relation to LF Networking

  • CNTi

  • Sylva (LFE)

  • free5GC (LF)

  • LFN Super Blueprints?

Education Level

Preference for a candidate participating in a graduate program

Skills

  • Good knowledge of Kubernetes and GNU/Linux systems

  • Good programming skills; experience with Crystal or Ruby is a plus

  • Motivated and eager to learn

Future Plans

  • Expand the use of CNTi Workload by Sylva, free5GC, and other end users

  • Enable vendors to utilize CNTi Workload suite to enhance CNF quality

  • Incorporate CNTi Workload into Operator Request for Proposals

Preferred Hours and Length of Mentorship

Both Full-time and Part-time are good choices, depending on the availability and preferences.

Mentor(s)