When it comes to how Network Function Virtualization (NFV) revolutionized CSPs' operational and business models and caused a significant shift to the telecommunications landscape, the smartphone revolution is the best analogy. If you recall, in the near past, which we call the “pre-smartphone” era, we used to carry a full waist bag of gadgets and accessories including digital cameras, MP3 players, GPS trackers, flip hones, Gameboy, and this list goes on. But after the smartphone merged all the above functions into a single generic piece of hardware, with an OS running platform services for the required software applications, Apple Store and Google Play Store took over the once multibillion-dollar markets of products. And the exact same thing happened to the networking industry.
Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Hardware
What NFV aims at is the same for CSPs: to virtualize the network services/functions performed by proprietary hardware platforms and converge them into a centralized software version running on a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-based hardware. The benefits are clearly discernible: reduction on CapEx and OpEX, agility in functionality, flexibility in service creation, operation automation, dynamic scalability, and market acceleration. Moreover, NFV is expected to open up the increasing demands/more diverse scenarios of service providers.
However, the widespread NFV deployment still faces challenges on the technology front such as (1) delivering highly scalable COTS servers to meet the CSPs’ requirements of system performance, service reliability, and function availability (2) realizing management automation and orchestration features with NFV applications (3) network security after the introduction of NFV technologies. Unlike the low-power systems confined to a hand-held device, NFV infrastructure utilizes server-class CPUs in a high-density chassis with high-end network adapters, high-capacity, and dense storage to support multiple network applications, and high-availability middleware.
Software-defined Networking (SDN)
SDN, on the other hand, is relatively new as a networking paradigm allowing control of the network to be decoupled from its hardware by a centralized software, which owns full control over the devices on the network. Not until the carriers began to redesign their networks with SDN to carry out fast and cheaper connectivity to distributed branches after several years of NFV adoption did they realize edge computing is the ideal architecture for today’s high-bandwidth and dynamic application．
With the virtual implementations of network services, the telcos have benefited much in use cases such as mobile core network/IMS virtualization, mobile base station virtualization, and network slicing; the sales of NFVI, vCPE, and uCPE even continues to grow rapidly due to the reason that, to deliver 5G services, they are implementing SDN in their infrastructure on edge base.
Converged Virtual Network Infrastructure
The converged virtual network infrastructure also benefits enterprise and SMBs by combining multiple VNFs into their service chains, primarily seen in use cases such as firewall, routing/switching, media server and content delivery/caching, and SBC (Session Border Controller) for VoIP security management.
In the long run, SDN and NFV will together shape a new paradigm where consolidate network services, and enterprise applications are merged on the same NFV systems and hardware, enabling future innovation and new types of services.
Lanner’s NFV-I Ready Platforms
To respond to the increasingly demanding interest in network edge products tailored to converged virtual services, Lanner has rolled out x86-based NFV platforms, pre-validated with major VNF makers and built-in open architecture for wide compatibility. Suggested desktop or rackmount appliances offer Intel® x86 multi-core CPU for running multiple VNFs, hardware acceleration like DPDK, Intel QuickAssist, SR-IOV and AES-NI, rich LAN port configurations including both RJ-45, SFP and SFP+ ports, as well as wireless connectivity with Wi-Fi/4G/LTE.