IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jftint/v14y2022i2p59-d750255.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Haruna Umar Adoga & Dimitrios P. Pezaros, 2022. "Network Function Virtualization and Service Function Chaining Frameworks: A Comprehensive Review of Requirements, Objectives, Implementations, and Open Research Challenges," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 14(2), pages 1-39, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:59-:d:750255
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/14/2/59/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/14/2/59/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yusuf Olayinka Imam-Fulani & Nasir Faruk & Olugbenga A. Sowande & Abubakar Abdulkarim & Emmanuel Alozie & Aliyu D. Usman & Kayode S. Adewole & Abdulkarim A. Oloyede & Haruna Chiroma & Salisu Garba & A, 2023. "5G Frequency Standardization, Technologies, Channel Models, and Network Deployment: Advances, Challenges, and Future Directions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-71, March.
    2. Zhongwei Huang & Dagang Li & Chenhao Wu & Hua Lu, 2022. "Reinforcement Learning-Based Delay-Aware Path Exploration of Parallelized Service Function Chains," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(24), pages 1-25, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:59-:d:750255. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.