2023-02-16 - Anuket: Future Directions and Collaboration with Other Projects

Topic Leader(s)

• @Beth Cohen 

• @Gergely Csatari 

Topic Description

Topic Overview

The Anuket project has been developing Telecom infrastructure reference models and architectures for a few years now.  It is time to check in with the community to see how well the project is aligning with the Telecom community as a whole. 

Slides & Recording

Session Recording: Anuket Future Directions and Collaboration with Other Projects.mp4

Chat File: meeting_saved_chat.txt

Agenda

Very draft agenda, just some bullet points to initiate discussion

• For what the different Anuket sub-projects are used in the industry
  
  

  • Specification projects: RM, RA1, RA2, RI1, RI2, RC1, RC2

  • Reference implementation: kuberef

  • Testing/Implementation: functest, vineperf, barometer

  •  Research: Thoth

• What are the connection points to other communities?
  
  

  • Traditional SDO-s

    • GSMA, ETSI NFV, O-RAN, 3GPP, DMTF

  • Open source communities

    • OpenStack

    • CNCF, Kubernetes, CAPI ...

    • ODIM

    • Sylva

    • Nephio

    • ONAP

Minutes

• Current usage of Anuket sub-projects
  
  

  • Research (Thoth)

    • Usage is very "futuristic"

    • Getting the data is a huge challenge

    • Anonimization/obfuscation is needed before the data can be handed over from real network operators to the project

    • There are legal and geopolitical challenges

    • Orange published some data, but it is old

    • Some data was generated

    • An alternative approach could be generating data using a private 5G network, possibly by a research institute. Might be worth getting UNH involved, considering their track record of working with LFN and the industry.

  • Testing/Implementation – Telcos seem to be actually using these tools.  @Sandra Jackson suggested that we reach out to the community to have them share how they are using these tools.  

  • RI2 PoC instance in UNH labs

  • Verizon has not been proactive about using any of this.  Still focused on RA1 infrastructure.

  • RC1 by AT&T

  • Sylva

    • RA2 compliant, but not RI2, but they have their own implementation

    • Validation program is using Functest, but not RC2?

    • https://gitlab.com/sylva-projects/validation_center/-/tree/main/Validation%20Scripts/Functest%20Xtesting%20-%20Platform%20smoke%20tests
      https://gitlab.com/sylva-projects/sylva with https://gitlab.com/sylva-projects/sylva/-/raw/main/img/ecosystem.png

    • In alignment with Anuket – or at least the intention is there.

  • Reference Implementations: Kuberef  As long as it is compliant with Kubernates overall the CNCF is OK with it.  Kuberef is a good tool, but we should not be married to it.  Need it to build the RI2 implementations.  The ecosystem needs to be clear about its boundaries with the other projects.  Scope issues at the edges of the projects.  How much do we 

  • Aarna’s proposal of adding Nephio to the 5G-SBP already includes Anuket as the K8S platform. See here: 2023-02 - 5G SBP: Birds of Feather: Is there value in adding Nephio?

    • Idea to put Nephio in the UNH lab RI2 implementation to see how well the projects work together from a technical perspective.  Testing services and workloads in the lab would help the projects work more collaboratively.  First release date for Nephio targeted in April.

  • Action Items and follow ups:

    • Look to loop in the O-RAN folks with Anuket to see how much collaboration can be done to share work.  Set up a session to work with the O-RAN team. 

    • Make sure that 5GSuper blueprint is using Anuket as its base architecture.  Have a person from Anuket attend the 5G super blueprint meetings for better collaboration. 

    • Look at Aarna's proposal to use ANuket for Nephio.

Action Items