Routing Algorithms for Network Function Virtualization Enabled Multicast Topology on SDN

Abstract

Many multicast services such as live multimedia distribution and real-time event monitoring require multicast mechanisms that involve network functions (e.g., firewall and video transcoding). Network function virtualization (NFV) is a concept that proposes using virtualization to implement network functions on infrastructure building block (such as high volume servers and virtual machines), where software provides the functionality of existing purpose-built network equipment. We present an approach for building the multicast mechanism whereby multicast flows are processed by NFV before reaching their end users. We propose a routing algorithm and a method for building an appropriate multicast topology.