SD-WAN Gets a Global Standard

As new technology uptake goes, SD-WAN has caught on really quickly. At least it sure seems like everyone has an SD-WAN offering of some sort in place. And now we have a standard to measure those services up to, as yesterday MEF formally announced the publication of its global standard defining SD-WAN, MEF 70.

The standard was officially approved by the organization’s board at its recent annual meeting. It was developed under the MEF 3.0 umbrella over the last few years alongside next generation Carrier Ethernet, Optical Transport, IP, and Security Serives within an LSO context. Numerous companies contributed to the standard, including Nuage/Nokia, Fujitsu, Amdocs, Ceragon, Cisco, Colt, Futurewei, Silver Peak, TDS Telecom, and Verizon.

What MEF 70 defines is SD-WAN’s service attributes, traffic handling rules, and key concepts and definitions. The next phase, dubbed MEF 70.1, will look at additional service attributes, topology and connectivity, and underlay connectivity service parameters, as well as application security and other related topics.

The publication of MEF 70 is a key milestone in the young technology’s evolution.  But of course no standard is complete without a certification process, so MEF 3.0’s certification pilot program is expected to launch in Q4 of this year.

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Categories: SDN