The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) is a global community of organizations working together to accelerate the development and deployment of standards-based, open, and disaggregated, communication technology solutions. One of several important initiatives within TIP is the TIP OpenWiFi Project. Its purpose is to accelerate Wi-Fi infrastructure innovation through an open-source project that was formed to democratize delivery of premium Wi-Fi services.
It is doing so by working with vendors and service providers alike to define and develop to open interfaces between critical functions needed for delivering Wi-Fi service including open Access Points, open Wi-Fi Controllers, and open APIs to easily integrate third party services.
Historically this architecture has been closed and single-vendor focused leading to poor economics, vendor lock-in and slow innovation.
The traditional model for deploying Wi-Fi networks has been one of a closed system. Single-vendor solutions delivered expensive access points which could only be managed and controlled by that same vendor’s Wi-Fi controller which was a proprietary interface ensuring vendor-lock-in.
As with all closed systems, innovation was slow and total cost of ownership was high based on the lack of competition for any of the individual component parts that made up a solution – they were all controlled by the same vendor. An enterprise could change out their entire network and move to another vendor but that is prohibitively expensive. The pain points of this single vendor proprietary model include high total cost of ownership (initial cost and expensive maintenance), single vendor control (no competition or supply-chain diversity) and very slow innovation with no ability to leverage third-party services due to proprietary interfaces.
The TIP OpenWiFi project set out to change all that through a cooperative and open model which included all key components of the solution – from “white box” Access Points to open-source, cloud-native based Wi-Fi controllers to defined and open APIs for ease of application portability.
As this model gains momentum, it has the ability to democratize and revolutionize the deployment of Wi-Fi networks leading to better economics, rapid innovation of new services and a better Return on Investment (ROI).
TIP OpenWiFi significantly improves the business case for Wi-Fi through multi-vendor cooperation and commitment to a well-defined open-source model to deliver critical Wi-Fi functions and services.
One of the critical functional areas is the Wi-Fi controller. Benu Networks WiFi Controller is TIP-Compliant and has been tested extensively with TIP-certified WiFi APs from a variety of vendors. The Benu WiFi Controller adds numerous capabilities to WiFi deployments, such as seamless roaming across WiFi APs (even layer 3 roaming), best-in-class guest network services, advanced bandwidth and QoS controls, in-depth security, and per-user device policies.
To learn more about these capabilities, see the Benu WAG Solution brief and SASE data sheet.
The Benu SD-Edge Platform virtualizes key network functions enabling service providers to seamlessly transition to a cloud-based, 5G ready network.
Our cloud-native disaggregated architecture enables service providers to deliver network functionality through software running on commercial off the shelf hardware (COTs), thereby eliminating hardware dependencies and vendor lock-in. That functionality includes the support for the OpenWiFi controller function, and it has been tested and certified as compliant.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a cloud-based security model designed to address the network and security challenges caused by today’s digital business transformation.
Benu Networks software-defined SASE services run inside the carrier network, providing the industry’s only carrier-first SASE approach. Our solution provides a management UI for the ISP/MSP (superuser) as well as a UI for channel partners (with visibility into their enterprise accounts) and one for the end user (e.g., enterprise, venue or MDU). This allows the carrier to support multiple sales models including direct or channel.
In addition to high-value services like SASE, our cloud-native SD-Edge platform can provide the 5G AGF (Access Gateway Function) for wireless wireline convergence, as well as deliver Wireless Access Gateway (WAG) and Trusted Wireless Access Gateway (T) WAG functions.
As Wi-Fi continues to grow as an access methodology and as service providers move aggressively to a 5G converged world the power and flexibility of Benu Networks cloud-native SD-Edge cloud-native platform plays a key role in the transformation of the network.
As Wi-Fi continues to grow as an access methodology and as service providers move aggressively to a 5G converged world the power and flexibility of Benu Networks cloud-native SD-Edge cloud-native platform plays a key role in the transformation of the network.