The Open Networking Foundation, an SDN advocacy organization, today announced it's opening its conformance testing program to non-members. The change should make it easier for carriers to find OpenFlow-compliant hardware and software, as well as making it easier for conformance testing labs to make money.
"We want to bring more people into the ecosystem, work with labs to grow their market for potential customers, and develop a viable business model for conformance testing," Open Networking Foundation Executive Director Dan Pitt told Light Reading.
Regardless of ONF membership, vendors who pass the ONF OpenFlow Conformance Testing Program tests can use the OpenFlow-certified logo and assert their products' conformance.
"Having a diverse ecosystem of SDN-certified products reinforces the market's confidence in the OpenFlow standard," Erica Johnson, director of the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) and chair of the Open Networking Foundation's Testing Leadership Council, said in a statement from ONF.
Vendors can earn the certificate for networking hardware, including switches and routers, as well as networking software, after finishing tests with an ONF-accredited independent testing lab.
The ONF has six accredited international testing labs: Beijing Internet Institute (BII) in Beijing; China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL) in Beijing; Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs) in Bangalore; Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE) at Indiana University; Network Benchmarking Lab (NBL) of National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Hsinchu, Taiwan; and University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) at the University of New Hampshire.
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The ONF is a non-profit organization with more than 140 members, whose mission is to accelerate adoption of open SDN and OpenFlow technologies and standards.
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— Mitch Wagner,


, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading. Got a tip about SDN or NFV? Send it to [email protected].