JOX: An event-driven orchestrator for 5G network slicing

Abstract

Network slicing is expected to be the main pillar around which virtualization technologies together with SDN control and NFV, will provide on-demand network and cloud infrastructures and facilitate rapid service deployment. In this paper we present JOX, an event-driven orchestrator for the virtu- alized network, operating on top of the Juju management system, that inherently supports network slicing. JOX is a python-based generic network slicing orchestrator, with a plugins architecture that is able to support different segments of a modern mobile edge network. We present a concrete prototype implementation of JOX for LTE, with experimental results considering footprint analysis, performance metrics, and implementation experience for slicing and orchestrating of an operational LTE network.