Network Function Virtualization: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges

TLDR

Network function virtualization decouples network functions from physical devices, promising reduced operating and capital expenses and faster service deployment, but remains in its infancy with many research opportunities. This paper surveys the current state of NFV and identifies promising research directions, following a discussion of its relationship to SDN and cloud computing. It reviews key NFV projects, standardization initiatives, early implementations, use cases, and commercial products.

Abstract

Network function virtualization (NFV) has drawn significant attention from both industry and academia as an important shift in telecommunication service provisioning. By decoupling network functions (NFs) from the physical devices on which they run, NFV has the potential to lead to significant reductions in operating expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX) and facilitate the deployment of new services with increased agility and faster time-to-value. The NFV paradigm is still in its infancy and there is a large spectrum of opportunities for the research community to develop new architectures, systems and applications, and to evaluate alternatives and trade-offs in developing technologies for its successful deployment. In this paper, after discussing NFV and its relationship with complementary fields of software defined networking (SDN) and cloud computing, we survey the state-of-the-art in NFV, and identify promising research directions in this area. We also overview key NFV projects, standardization efforts, early implementations, use cases, and commercial products.