Open Source Magma Platform for Building Wireless Networks
Description
"The Linux Foundation announced today that an open source Magma platform for building wireless networks will now be managed under its auspices.
Originally developed by Facebook, the founding members of the Magma consortium include Arm, Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, FreedomFi, Qualcomm, the Institute of Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University, the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance, and the Open Infrastructure Foundation (formerly the OpenStack Foundation).
Magma provides organizations with a modular approach to creating an access-agnostic mobile packet core that comes bundled with network automation and management tools that use open source software. The goal is to make it simpler for both enterprise IT organizations and carriers to set up a wireless network that can be deployed on standard IT servers rather than proprietary network infrastructure.
Up until today, Magma has been governed by Facebook. The goal is to create a vendor-neutral governing structure for the project that will encourage more organizations to participate and deploy the platform, said Arpit Joshipura, general manager for networking and edge at the Linux Foundation.
The Linux Foundation has launched a series of networking initiatives that are all intended to enable telecommunications carriers to deploy programmable network services based on virtual machines and containers. The goal is to make it simpler for carriers to more rapidly provision network services in an age where IT teams routinely provision infrastructure resources in minutes. In contrast, carriers are still heavily dependent on legacy proprietary network infrastructure that is still programmed manually. Carriers are now determining to what degree they want to replace that physical infrastructure with either proprietary software-defined networks (SDNs) or equivalent open source software.
Magma extends that effort by making it easier to deploy a wireless network in, for example, a remote area that extends the reach of a carrier’s service. Alternatively, enterprise IT organizations can deploy their own wireless network that can be integrated with services provided by a carrier. “The goal is to plug Magma into a larger ecosystem,” said Joshipura.
Wireless networks based on Magma are designed to integrate with existing LTE networks in addition to providing the foundation for delivering 5G services. FreedomFi, for example, has deployed Magma on a set of radio access gateways that enable organizations to cost-effectively deploy their own private 5G network, said FreedomFi CEO Boris Renski. “It’s a new architecture,” he said. “The total cost of deploying a private 5G network is dropping.”" (https://venturebeat.com/2021/02/03/the-linux-foundation-takes-control-of-open-source-magma-wireless-ecosystem/)