Network Function Virtualization: Challenges and Opportunities for Innovations

作者:Han, Bo*; Gopalakrishnan, Vijay; Ji, Lusheng; Lee, Seungjoon
来源:IEEE Communications Magazine, 2015, 53(2): 90-97.
DOI:10.1109/MCOM.2015.7045396

摘要

Network function virtualization was recently proposed to improve the flexibility of network service provisioning and reduce the time to market of new services. By leveraging virtualization technologies and commercial off-the-shelf programmable hardware, such as general-purpose servers, storage, and switches, NFV decouples the software implementation of network functions from the underlying hardware. As an emerging technology, NFV brings several challenges to network operators, such as the guarantee of network performance for virtual appliances, their dynamic instantiation and migration, and their efficient placement. In this article, we provide a brief overview of NFV, explain its requirements and architectural framework, present several use cases, and discuss the challenges and future directions in this burgeoning research area.

  • 出版日期2015-2