Abstract
Network slicing has become a fundamental property for next-generation networks, especially because an inherent part of 5G standardisation is the ability for service providers to migrate some or all of their network services to a virtual network infrastructure, thereby reducing both capital and operational costs. With network function virtualisation (NFV), network functions (NFs) such as firewalls, traffic load balancers, content filters, and intrusion detection systems (IDS) are either instantiated on virtual machines (VMs) or lightweight containers, often chained together to create a service function chain (SFC). In this work, we review the state-of-the-art NFV and SFC implementation frameworks and present a taxonomy of the current proposals. Our taxonomy comprises three major categories based on the primary objectives of each of the surveyed frameworks: (1) resource allocation and service orchestration, (2) performance tuning, and (3) resilience and fault recovery. We also identify some key open research challenges that require further exploration by the research community to achieve scalable, resilient, and high-performance NFV/SFC deployments in next-generation networks.
Highlights
Academic Editor: Eirini EleniWith the advent of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), middlebox functionality is increasingly being virtualized and provided in software, which can reduce power consumption, resource usage, and operational costs for service providers [1,2]
SDN, NFV, and service function chain (SFC) (Section 3) is presented as the foundation for the frameworks reviewed in this paper; We present a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art NFV frameworks for building and implementing virtual network functions (vNFs), frameworks that have been proposed for use in SFC environments
We extend this work by (1) creating a taxonomy that captures state-of-the-art frameworks; (2) presenting frameworks that capture the chaining of vNFs, which is key to the design of next-generation networks; and (3) presenting more open challenges that are key to achieving scalability of network functions, resilience, and high performance in NFV/SFC network environments
Summary
With the advent of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV), middlebox functionality is increasingly being virtualized and provided in software, which can reduce power consumption, resource usage, and operational costs for service providers [1,2]. We put together these frameworks while highlighting their contributions and how they solve research problems associated with realising NFV/SFC in service provider network environments. Experts from both academia and industry are putting a lot of effort in the research and development of SFC. SDN, NFV, and SFC (Section 3) is presented as the foundation for the frameworks reviewed in this paper; We present a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art NFV frameworks for building and implementing vNFs, frameworks that have been proposed for use in SFC environments.
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