Global state, local decisions: Decentralized NFV for ISPs via enhanced SDN

The network functions virtualization paradigm is rapidly gaining interest among Internet service providers. However, the transition to this paradigm on ISP networks comes with a unique set of challenges: legacy equipment already in place, heterogeneous traffic from multiple clients, and very large s...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Rodríguez Natal, Alberto, Ermagan, Vina, Noy, Ariel, Sahai, Ajay, Kaempfer, Gideon, Barkai, Sharon, Maino, Fabio, Cabellos Aparicio, Alberto|||0000-0001-9329-7584
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/115873
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/115873
https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600175
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Internet service providers
Telecommunication -- Traffic -- Management
Computer networks -- Scalability
Internet
Software defined networking
Telecommunication traffic
Virtualisation
Proveïdors d'accés a Internet
Telecomunicació -- Tràfic -- Gestió
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Arquitectura de computadors
Descripción
Sumario:The network functions virtualization paradigm is rapidly gaining interest among Internet service providers. However, the transition to this paradigm on ISP networks comes with a unique set of challenges: legacy equipment already in place, heterogeneous traffic from multiple clients, and very large scalability requirements. In this article we thoroughly analyze such challenges and discuss NFV design guidelines that address them efficiently. Particularly, we show that a decentralization of NFV control while maintaining global state improves scalability, offers better per-flow decisions and simplifies the implementation of virtual network functions. Building on top of such principles, we propose a partially decentralized NFV architecture enabled via an enhanced software-defined networking infrastructure. We also perform a qualitative analysis of the architecture to identify advantages and challenges. Finally, we determine the bottleneck component, based on the qualitative analysis, which we implement and benchmark in order to assess the feasibility of the architecture.