BOSTON – Volta Networks today announced its full support for the Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway (DCSG), an open approach to build out 5G transport networks. The requirements were created by the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP) Open Optical & Packet Transport (OOPT) project group and has gained significant traction in the telecommunications and networking industries. DCSG is critical to the development and deployment of 5G technology on a global scale and enables a series of technical features and new services. Volta’s solution is fully tested, DCSG compliant and generally available now for customer deployments. 

Volta Networks has completed all required testing on its Volta Elastic Virtual Routing Engine (VEVRE) in order to meet DCSG requirements, including testing in tier-one service provider labs and in the TIP PlugFest, which verifies interoperability among different products.  

“We are happy to see how Volta Networks has been able to achieve this important milestone in a very short period of time,” said David Hutton, Chief Engineer at the Telecom Infra Project. “There is great momentum behind TIP's DCSG solution with a number of commercial deployments happening across the world. This has only been possible because of partners like Volta which are fully committed to develop open and disaggregated solutions through collaborating with the wider industry ecosystem.” 

The company has also conducted testing with several equipment vendors, including Edgecore Networks. Unlike other virtual routing approaches which are limited to x86 platforms, Volta is the only vendor to support multiple virtual routers on an ASIC-based platform. 

“Edgecore and Volta Networks are committed to bringing the benefits of open networking to customers, so thorough interoperability testing of Volta’s software with our switching hardware is important to verify DCSG compliance,” said Michael Ward, Vice President of Business Development – Software at Edgecore Networks. “As telecommunications providers continue to demand higher capacity, easier scalability and more features, an open networking ecosystem has become the preferred path to meeting the requirements of service provider networks.”   

The extensive testing demonstrates Volta’s support for key features including IEEE 1588 Precision Timing Protocol (PTP), segment routing, hierarchical Quality-of-Service (QoS) on ingress and egress, traditional routing protocols, and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). DCSG is critical to enabling 5G transport networks to support RAN disaggregation as well as new 5G services such as network slicing, Radio Access Networks (RAN) Sharing and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC).  

The testing follows Volta’s ongoing momentum with carriers and its continued alignment with TIP programs and standards. In March, Volta announced its support for TIP’s Disaggregated Open Routers (DOR) initiative and joined the DOR project team, driving research into new network architectures and services. In 2019, Volta was named a finalist for TIP’s DCSG technical specification. The finalists were based on an RFI issued by Vodafone, TIM Brasil and Telefonica, and vendors were reviewed for solution architecture, functionality, scalability, availability and solution roadmap. Volta also was named a strategic partner for Fujitsu’s expanded Smart xHaul transport solution to accelerate seamless and efficient evolution to 5G networks.

VEVRE is a virtual routing platform that reduces total cost of ownership by 90% compared to legacy routers, delivers unprecedented scale with up to 255 virtual routers per switch as well as support for industry standard routing protocols and carrier automation. Because Volta is a full-featured routing services platform, the support for carrier-grade operations standards greatly reduces the OpEx component of the total cost of ownership. Automating service creation coupled with the responsiveness from Volta’s network programmability speeds time to revenue and ensures SLAs while keeping cost as low as possible. 

Last month, Volta was named a winner in Light Reading's Leading Lights Awards 2020 for the Most Innovative Telco Cloud Product Strategy. The company was also named an IDC Innovator for disaggregated routing platforms, received a Network Innovation Award for cloud-based routing from TechTarget and was named a top telecom disruptor by Fierce Telecom.  

“The carrier community had defined the requirements, and Volta has completed all of the required testing to be fully DCSG compliant and offer a full range of features, including PTP, QoS, and Segment Routing,” said Jose-Miguel Pulido, Sales Chief Technology Officer at Volta Networks. “DCSG plays an important role in making 5G a reality on a widespread basis, and our extensive testing and work with several labs, customers and with TIP shows our commitment to DCSG.”