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This section provides an overview of the NFV (NFaaS) use case.
Introduction
Motivation
The primary challenges that network operators face today are the handling of the explosive demand of mobile traffic, and introducing and operationalizing new services while reducing costs. To combat these challenges, service providers strive for:
- Agility, flexibility, scalability to their network.
- Reduction of CAPEX and OPEX.
- Accelerated service implementation speed.
- Reduced operational complexity and increased visibility of system states.
Service providers have started looking to Network Function Virtualization (NFV) as a possible solution to the above four criteria, as it promises to bring flexibility and agility to Service Provider networks by moving network functions from dedicated appliances and middle boxes to generic servers.
While NFV can reduce CAPEX because commodity servers may be used efficiently by VMs, it increases OPEX as service providers now have to contend with increased management complexity due to:
- The management and orchestration of VMs on commodity servers
- The management of network function software on the VMs.
- How VMs must be interconnected based on subscriber’s service contract also really complex matter.
One proposed solution to handling these complexities is to provide Service Providers with an abstractive notion of a Service to work with, rather than a collection of servers or VMs.