Open Networking Summit
Open Networking Summit is an industry conference focused on open networking, Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) for service providers, cloud operators, and enterprises.
- Annual conference program covering SDN, NFV, and open networking architectures
- Technical sessions, keynotes, and tutorials on open-source networking projects and deployments
- Collaborative forum for service providers, cloud platforms, vendors, and enterprise networking teams
- Showcase of open networking use cases across data center, carrier, and edge environments
- Community ecosystem around standards, open-source frameworks, and interoperable network solutions
More About Open Networking Summit
Open Networking Summit focuses on open networking and programmable infrastructure across telecom, cloud, and enterprise environments, with content oriented to architects, network engineers, and technical decision-makers evaluating SDN, NFV, and related open-source ecosystems. The event program typically spans technical deep dives, case studies, and architectural discussions that address deployment models for carrier networks, data centers, and edge platforms.
The summit’s agenda covers architectures based on SDN (networking), including separation of control and data planes, centralized and distributed controllers, and policy-driven automation of network behavior. NFV (networking) is another core theme, with coverage of virtual network functions (VNFs), cloud-native network functions (CNFs), and their orchestration on virtualized and container-based infrastructure. Sessions often reference frameworks and protocols that are common in open networking, such as OpenFlow, overlay tunneling mechanisms, segment routing, and BGP-based architectures, when these are part of SDN or NFV designs.
Open Networking Summit also aligns with open-source networking and cloud-native ecosystems, where projects in areas such as network orchestration, service mesh, container networking, and infrastructure automation are discussed in the context of production deployment. For enterprises and service providers, the summit functions as a venue to evaluate approaches for integrating open-source controllers, orchestration platforms, and programmable data planes into existing IP/MPLS, optical, and wireless networks.
From a marketplace categorization perspective, Open Networking Summit fits into the domains of networking (carrier and data center networking), open-source infrastructure (open networking and orchestration), and cloud-native networking (Kubernetes and container networking). Enterprise stakeholders use the event’s content to compare architectural patterns for multi-cloud connectivity, SD-WAN-type designs, network slicing, and edge computing connectivity, where open and programmable interfaces are central requirements.
Because the summit brings together service providers, hyperscale cloud operators, network equipment vendors, and software suppliers, it operates as a neutral forum where reference architectures, interoperability topics, and ecosystem alignment around SDN, NFV, and open networking APIs are discussed. This positioning makes the Open Networking Summit relevant for organizations that need to understand how open networking standards, open-source platforms, and programmable network constructs can be integrated into long-term infrastructure roadmaps and operational models.