By Kelly Hill, Feb 18, 2021 | Original RCR Wireless Article here
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun a broad collaboration with the Linux Foundation, hoping to spur open-source development of technologies for use by the U.S. government that include secure 5G network software and applications.
The US GOV OPS (Open Programmable, Secure) umbrella organization’s first project, OPS-5G, will focus on a software stack for 5G, the network edge and IoT. According to a newly established website about the project, OPS-5G will define and test an “end-to-end 5G stack” and include elements from multiple Linux Foundation projects, including LF Networking, LF Edge, Zephyr Project and Cloud Native Computing Foundation, along with other top-tier projects that call the Linux Foundation home.
“The project formation encourages ecosystem players to support U.S. government initiatives to create the latest in technology software,” according to DARPA and the Linux Foundation. According to the two organizations, OPS-5G’s goal is to “create open source software and systems enabling secure end to end 5G and follow-on mobile networks” and address “feature velocity” in open-source software, mitigate security concerns such as large-scale botnets that leverage IoT devices, network slicing on “suspect gear” and “adaptive adversaries operating at scale.”
Mike Woster, head of ecosystems at the Linux Foundation, said that the Linux Foundation’s breadth of projects means that between existing open source projects and new ones that may be initiated under the US GOV OPS umbrella, it will be possible to stitch together a “full, 5G end-to-end 5G reference architecture.” The umbrella project also gives DARPA a place to push the results of its research and development into open-source collaborations. The overall goal is to accelerate 5G software development ranging from specific applications to network feature support, and orchestration and analytics, by borrowing from and building upon existing open-source projects and new ones.
The US GOV OPS project will launch as a standard open source project, with a charter similar to other projects within the Linux Foundation; which already is home to a number of projects related to Open RAN, edge computing, Kubernetes and others that will enable US GOV OPS to “build on a secure code base for use by the U.S. government,” according to a release.
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