Centec Networks, a startup Ethernet switching silicon and turnkey solution vendor and pioneer in SDN and OpenFlow protocol development in China, has recently participated in the Open Networking Foundation's (ONF) PlugFest interoperability test.

At the event, Centec Networks OpenFlow switch reference system V330 completed interoperability testing with many software defined networking (SDN) controller and OpenFlow switch vendors.

The interoperability test was conducted at the Open Networking Foundation's (ONF) second semi-annual PlugFest event, held at Indiana University's (News - Alert) InCNTRE lab in Indianapolis. More than 20 switch and controller vendors including IBM, BigSwitch, Huawei, Juniper, NEC, NTT, NTT Data, HP, Broadcade, Ciena and Intel (News - Alert) participated in test cases of OpenFlow applied to service provider, data center, and enterprise markets.

Centec's V330 OpenFlow Switch Reference System took part in most test cases and showed complete interoperability with all of the SDN controllers and other vendors' OpenFlow switches.

"It's important to have merchant silicon vendors participate in our PlugFest testing events to demonstrate interoperability with other vendors' OpenFlow controllers and switches," said Dan Pitt, executive director, Open Networking Foundation, in a statement.

"We believe interoperability will accelerate the development and adoption of SDN and the OpenFlow protocol, because merchant silicon plays a key role in SDN's data plane and control plane separation concept and the development of a mass market for the technology," Pitt added.

V330 adopts industry standard OpenvSwitch (OVS) as the OpenFlow switch software stack with standard compliant OpenFlow interface to SDN controllers. The V330 OpenFlow switch reference design has already been deployed in Data Centers in China.

The interoperability test has proved the standard conformance of compliance of the solution and interoperability with other leading SDN vendors' products. It also proves a significant milestone for the company to continue to develop SDN and OpenFlow-based optimized silicon and turnkey solutions to drive the evolution of SDN.

V330 supports advanced features such as NvGRE, MPLS, and MPLS L2VPN to enable more scalable SDN deployment in data center and carrier networks. The openness of OVS and Centec's Open SDK allows users to easily program the switch for SDN applications such as network virtualization and traffic engineering, to accelerate the SDN and OpenFlow development in China and Worldwide.