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Broadband Forum Unveils New Ground-breaking CloudCO Capabilities

Broadband Forum | October 29, 2021

A cutting-edge Broadband Forum demonstration has showcased how operators can utilize industry standards and existing investments to achieve a virtualized infrastructure that enables zero touch provisioning, service activation and session steering within a multi-vendor and white box environment.

Bringing together leading service providers, vendors and interoperability labs at this year’s Broadband World Forum, the Cloud Central Office (CloudCO) project enables dynamic use cases, including multi-vendor service creation and activation and a truly virtualized disaggregated multi-vendor network.

In a world-first, the demonstration also presented a new gaming session steering application, demonstrating how operators can use CloudCO to detect a change in user traffic type, check network conditions against defined service levels and reprogram session steering to meet them and preserve the user experience.

“Dynamic session steering brings numerous benefits to a service provider’s business, allowing them to provide new and competitive service offerings with assurance capabilities that can seamlessly act on the network in a timely manner to ensure the assurance objectives of the service being offered."

Tim Carey, Chairman of the Broadband Forum's OB-BAA open source project

The CloudCO project recasts the Central Office hosting infrastructure to utilize Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and cloud technologies. Key components include disaggregated control plane functions in the Access and Edge networks, dynamic session steering as well as subscriber session steering, a Broadband Access Abstraction (BAA) layer with disaggregated control and management plane functions. The flagship architecture brings network and services agility, automation and orchestration and a unified vision of interoperable and streamlined service deployments.

Supporting this year’s CloudCO demonstration was consulting and system integrator Reply, and service providers BT, TIM, and Vodafone, alongside engineers from Altice Labs, Capgemini Engineering, Broadcom, EANTC, Nokia, ufiSpace, VMware, and the University of New Hampshire – InterOperability Laboratory.

“This year’s CloudCO demonstration continues to highlight the great work across many of the Broadband Forum working groups, including Access and Transport Architecture (ATA) as well as the formidable work within the OB-BAA,” said Craig Thomas, Vice President Strategic Marketing and Business Development at Broadband Forum. “The demonstration emphasizes the importance of a truly virtualized disaggregated multi-vendor network, and how operators can take full advantage of all of the open source benefits by leveraging specification standards.”

The CloudCO framework is built from the ground up with components from the vendor community. To ensure full accessibility for participants, the demonstration was hosted both virtually and in-person to encourage safe participation during the Coronavirus pandemic.

About the Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum is the communications industry’s leading open standards development organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development. Our members’ passion – delivering on the promise of broadband by enabling smarter and faster broadband networks and a thriving broadband ecosystem.

Broadband Forum is an open, non-profit industry organization composed of the industry’s leading broadband operators, vendors, thought leaders who are shaping the future of broadband, and observers who closely track our progress. Its work to date has been the foundation for broadband’s global proliferation and innovation. For example, the Forum’s flagship TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol has nearly 1 billion installations worldwide.

Broadband Forum’s projects span across 5G, Connected Home, Cloud, and Access. Its working groups collaborate to define best practices for global networks, enable new revenue-generating service and content delivery, establish technology migration strategies, and engineer critical device, service & development management tools in the home and business IP networking infrastructure. We develop multi-service broadband packet networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market.

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Deploying a VPN based on new post quantum cryptography is the easiest way to protect data-in-transit from such attacks. The new IETF standard specifies how VPNs can exchange communications securely in the quantum age. The novel approach prioritises interoperability by making it possible for multiple post-quantum and classical encryption algorithms to be incorporated into VPNs. Combining both old and new encryption is essential to ensure no disruption to the functioning of existing IT systems, and to protect data from attack by both classical and quantum computers. This is a particularly important milestone for internet connectivity and security as we are transitioning from an era where the world relied upon just one or two algorithms (RSA and Elliptic Curve), to a situation where different nation states are deploying a wide variety of different post-quantum algorithms. This new IETF standard is the glue that allows parties using different public key encryption algorithms to talk with one another. The new IETF standard was proposed and designed by Post-Quantum, a British cyber security company that’s built a portfolio of market-ready quantum-safe cyber security products. Post-Quantum’s own Hybrid PQ VPN uses the new IETF standard and is already in use by NATO to secure its communications from quantum attack, supporting interoperable communications between NATO members. CJ Tjhai, CTO, Post-Quantum and original author of the new IETF standard said: “I’d like to thank all the technologists that collaborated with us on this IETF standard. Much of the focus has been on NIST’s new post quantum encryption algorithms themselves, but this is insufficient unless you have a protocol that defines how the connectivity is done. The easiest way to prevent Harvest Now Decrypt Later attacks is to deploy a PQ VPN based on the new IETF standard. NIST’s new algorithms are only useful if we have agreed standards for their use and mature products that can accommodate them.” Andersen Cheng, Executive Chairman, Post-Quantum added: “CJ and his collaborators have completed important work that makes it possible for tech companies to build quantum-safe VPNs that communicate to one another. We are entering a period where different countries are now recommending different encryption algorithms, so engineering our communications infrastructure to be interoperable and backward compatible is absolutely crucial. That’s the value our own VPN is bringing to organisations like NATO, a diverse member organisation with a variety of post-quantum algorithms in use. “In the commercial sector, we are pleased that Banque de France and Deutsche Bundesbank have also recently completed their project in transmitting payment messages using our protocol, which will pave the way for the Bank for International Settlements to build a complete chain of trust for central bank applications to counter any HNDL risks they already face today.” José María Lucía Moreno, Lead Partner, EY Wavespace and a Post-Quantum partner added: “Our agreement with Post-Quantum is an important step in helping EY and its clients to become quantum-safe. We’re increasingly consulting with our clients to identify where they use traditional encryption that will need to be upgraded, and to help them prepare for the quantum era. Post-Quantum’s approach is particularly interesting because they have modular software-based products like the VPN, which can be implemented together, or as standalones within existing environments, to offer protection today.” The IETF is the non-profit organisation with responsibility for developing the standards that define how the internet is built and used. Now that the IETF has ratified this work, VPN providers will adapt their protocols to match it, making this a defining standard for the future of cybersecurity as the world transitions from classical to new post-quantum encryption. Ratification represents the culmination of work dating back to 2017 when Post-Quantum took the lead in creating the original proposal for this standard. About Post-Quantum Post-Quantum is upgrading the world to next-generation encryption. Our quantum-safe platform includes modular software for Identity, Transmission and Encryption that protect organisations across their entire digital footprint. Products are interoperable, backward compatible and crypto-agile - ensuring a smooth transition to the next generation of encryption. Post-Quantum works with organisations in defence, critical national infrastructure and financial services, including a multi-year relationship with NATO to ensure its communications are secure against quantum attack.

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