Network Function Virtualization and Service Function Chaining Frameworks: A Comprehensive Review of Requirements, Objectives, Implementations, and Open Research Challenges

Haruna Umar Adoga and Dimitrios P. Pezaros
Additional contact information
Haruna Umar Adoga: School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Dimitrios P. Pezaros: School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Future Internet, 2022, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-39

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.

Keywords: network function virtualization; service function chaining; software defined networking; next-generation networks; SFC frameworks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/14/2/59/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/14/2/59/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jftint:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:59-:d:750255

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().