RAD to Exhibit the First Customer Edge Distributed NFV Solution and Ecosystem at Africa Com 2014

RAD has announced that it will be exhibiting the industry’s first dedicated customer-edge Distributed Network Functions Virtualization (D-NFV) solution at Africa Com 2014.

Now commercially available, the solution is based on the company’s ETX, a powerful Layer 2/Layer 3 Network Termination Unit (NTU). The NTU is equipped with a D-NFV x86 server module that functions as a virtualization engine at the customer edge.

“The typical perception of NFV is that virtualized network functions (VNFs) should be implemented in data centers, but, from a service provider’s standpoint, they would best be located where they will be most effective and least expensive,” explains Ulik Broida, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at RAD. “Service providers, therefore, should be free to locate NFV in all possible locations, from the data center to the network node to the customer premises,” he continues. “In addition, VNFs placed at the customer edge facilitate effective ramp-up of NFV solutions with a centerless NFV approach that requires a minimum of upfront investment and risk while providing service agility,” Broida notes. “RAD has designed its solution also to be an ideal first phase towards full-scale NFV deployment, which may combine VNFs at the customer edge, the network nodes and at the data center.”

Together with the solution’s launch, RAD has also announced the formation of the RAD D-NFV Alliance, an application ecosystem of network functions and value added capabilities. While it is open to all vendors, RAD pre-tests and certifies each application to ensure optimum quality and performance. The ecosystem embraces multiple virtualized application categories, such as security, networking and testing tools.

PoC Testing with Major Carriers
RAD has been running D-NFV testing with major carriers since the middle of last year, and publically co-presented a “Multi-vendor Distributed NFV” PoC within ETSI’s NFV ISG framework, together with its carrier sponsor, CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and three other vendor participants: Cyan (NYSE: CYNI), Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) and Certes Networks.

Africa Com will be held November 11-13 in Cape Town, South Africa.