Title
Elastic network functions: opportunities and challenges
Abstract
Network function virtualization (NFV) and software defined networking (SDN) are key technology enablers for cost reductions and new business models in networking. The possibility to automatically and dynamically scale network services at run time is one of the main claims of NFV. Elastic NFV could be similar to what elastic cloud services provide for compute, with pay-per-use cost models for customers. However, control of resources for elastic services is far from trivial. We show how current NFV and SDN architectures could support elastic resource services for network functions (NFs). We reveal that the current NFV architecture does not allow recursive resource orchestration, therefore preventing resource scaling requests from being handled by a resource orchestrator overseeing the entire domain where an NF is executed. We introduce a logical centralization of joint compute and network resource orchestration as a UNIFY framework, which enables direct control of elastic resources for the NFs. We show opportunities and challenges associated with such an architecture.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1109/MNET.2015.7113220
Network, IEEE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Computer architecture,Virtualization,Noise measurement,Telecommunication network management,Telecommunication standards,Logic gates,Firewalls (computing),Network architecture
Virtualization,Architecture,Computer science,Computer network,Network architecture,Orchestration,Business model,Software-defined networking,Orchestration (computing),Recursion,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
29
3
0890-8044
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
18
1.53
4
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Róbert Szabó111616.29
Mario Kind227223.68
F.-Joachim Westphal310910.85
Hagen Woesner417832.32
David Jocha5263.81
András Császár6181.53