The alphabet soup of network standards bodies, like the Internet Engineering Task Force, Broadband Forum and Metro Ethernet Forum are transforming, according to Dave Ward (pictured), chief technical officer of engineering and chief architect at Cisco Systems Inc.

“Each one of those standards bodies is redefining themselves to be SDN [Software-Defined Network]-capable,” Ward said. “All these organizations have now taken on that mantra that came out of open-source SDN of model-driven networking.”

Ward spoke to host Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) and guest host Scott Raynovich (@rayno) of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California.

IETF, in particular, is using model-driven networking to enable a service approach that differentiates it from Simple Network Management Protocol’s blanket distribution, he said.

The heart of this new networking paradigm is a data-modeling language called Yang. While it enables innovation, the problem is that everyone is using Yang in a different way, so it may be difficult for operators to stay abreast of variations or choose wisely among them, Ward explained.

“If there was consolidation, that would be easier to track and an easier place to develop,” he said. But in the meantime, “it’s 50 shades of Yang,” said Ward.

Open source unites

Communities like The Linux Foundation, however, with its OpenDaylight networking project, offer some hope of at least bringing the technologies under one roof and providing guidance, Ward stated.

“The open-source communities in particular are coming together and trying to integrate the pieces together versus just islands of cool technology that there’s a few geeks interested in,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Open Networking Summit-#ons2017.

Photo: SiliconANGLE