Networks are at the heart of every business. Without them, enterprises will stop running.
Because of the network, employees can connect to servers, and users can access software and the internet and connect with other businesses. But as the number of internet-connected devices grows, internet traffic explodes even faster.
Businesses have outsourced most services to the cloud, from voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls to streaming videos and real-time cloud backup services. This shift to the cloud also affects everything from network architecture to how data centers are built and the hardware they contain. Businesses that want to take advantage of these opportunities or this trend need to know what it means for them.
Over the past few years, telecommunications and technology companies have reduced operating expenditures (OpEx) by leveraging new technologies such as virtual machines (VMs) and cloud computing. This is where network function virtualization (NFV) applications come in.
NFV technology has been around for several years, but it has only recently garnered enough attention in the business world. It dramatically improves operational efficiency and enables enterprises to save massive costs. As a result, it remains highly relevant in the current software-defined networking (SDN) environment, where businesses rush to incorporate software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) software to manage enterprise traffic.
Network function virtualization, or NFV, is a concept in network architecture that decouples network functions, such as packet switching, protocol termination, information services from proprietary hardware appliances and executes them as software on general-purpose hardware. This helps reduce an organization's operating expenses by taking control of network resources and services.
This decoupling of hardware appliances helps businesses operate more efficiently and cost-effectively without compromising performance. In an environment where capital expenditure (CapEx) is controlled tightly, NFV is a cheaper alternative to the significant upfront costs of network expansion.
Network functions virtualization breaks the hardware dependency of network equipment. It's an approach to building, deploying, managing, and testing communications networks where most of the tasks are performed on standard x86 servers operating on commonly available server software. NFV is an alternative network architecture that runs most networking functions as software on general-purpose hardware.
Service providers and enterprises can use inexpensive switches, storage, and servers to run VMs that perform network functions instead of costly hardware. Multiple services are consolidated on a single physical server, reducing costs and infrastructure rollouts. If a company needs a new network function, it can create a new virtual machine to execute that job.
Are you still confused? At the simplest level, NFV is a way to virtualize network services, such as routers, firewalls, and load balancers. But in practice, NFV also includes many other crucial networking elements – from big data analytics to content distribution networks (CDN) and new network programmability tools. It’s all tied together by an interface between hardware and software created by virtualization.
NFV applications are applied to a wide range of network functions, including mobile networks. Some of the most frequently used network function virtualization applications are:
Dedicated hardware devices perform most network-related tasks in a conventional corporate network. Each device accomplishes a particular function, such as routing network traffic or balancing data loads. Although extensively used and technologically stable, this strategy is expensive, wasteful, and inflexible, especially with today's dynamic workloads and enormous amounts of heterogeneous data. Frequent launch of new services necessitates network reconfiguration and on-site installation of new equipment, which takes more floor space, electricity, and skilled maintenance personnel.
In the digital age, innovation cycles are accelerated, requiring greater flexibility and dynamism than hardware-based appliances provide. A hardwired network with single-function boxes is time-consuming, sluggish, and prevents service providers from giving dynamic services.
Given the tremendous transformation that hyperscale data centers have undergone, from once purely physical to almost entirely virtualized, it’s no surprise that the telecom industry is beginning to follow a similar path.
Utilities and communications providers whose businesses revolve around long-term network use and investment have historically been held back from taking advantage of the economic and operational benefits of cloud computing – due to a lack of standards – but now have a chance to embrace this technology.
In doing so, they can speed up their development cycles, reduce the amount of infrastructure needed for new services, and take advantage of economies of scale with leading data center operators.
Virtualized network functions make networks agile and capable of automatically responding to the demands of the traffic and services operating over it. The two critical enabling technologies for this are software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).
SDN and NFV are complementary but increasingly interdependent. While the former enables dynamic network control and network as a service (NaaS) provisioning, the latter allows managing and orchestrating virtual resources for network function delivery and compilation into higher-layer network services.
NFV separates communication services from the underlying hardware, such as routers and firewalls. This new segmentation allows network operations to supply additional services dynamically and without new hardware. In NFV, network components are deployed in hours instead of months. Furthermore, virtualized services can operate on cheaper generic servers rather than proprietary hardware.
NFV came into the picture as service providers wanted to make adding new network functions or applications easier and faster. At the OpenFlow World Congress in 2012, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), a coalition of telecom service providers including AT&T, China Mobile, BT Group, Deutsche Telekom, and others, originally presented the concept of a network functions virtualization standard.
The ETSI ISG NFV is a standards agency with standards and protocols for NFV management and network orchestration (MANO).
Service providers sought a means to speed up network service rollout. Launching new network services was a time-consuming operation that included the installation of extra hardware components. As the cost of energy, space, and qualified networking hardware engineers increased, the ETSI committee decided to virtualize network functions to address these issues. NFV eliminates physical space for hardware appliances and doesn’t require advanced networking knowledge to deploy and administer.
Several open-source initiatives, including ETSI, Open Platform for NFV, Open Network Automation Platform, Open Source MANO, and MEF (formerly the Metro Ethernet Forum), are currently defining NFV standards. There are so many different groups with conflicting standards proposals, so it’s difficult for service providers to become familiar with NFV. Despite all the odds, it’s gaining popularity due to the rapidly increasing complexity and needs of corporate networks today.
Network function virtualization employs virtualized networking components to provide a hardware-independent infrastructure. The network function virtualization architecture depends on server virtualization technologies to enable the virtual machine required to host network operations.
Virtualization allows businesses to allocate resources on demand to address the needs of dynamic and developing workloads, all while benefiting from the cost reductions that come with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware.
The everyday computing, storage, and network resources are virtualized and deployed on COTS hardware such as x86 servers. Load balancing, routing, and firewall security are all handled by software, not hardware. A hypervisor enables network engineers to program all of the different components of the virtual network and even automate network deployment. IT managers can customize many aspects of network operations in minutes through a single control point.
Since virtualized resources are accessible, VMs are assigned portions of the resources available on the x86 server. As a result, numerous VMs can operate on a single server and scale to use the remaining free resources. This also implies that resources are less likely idle and data centers with virtualized architecture are used more efficiently. The data plane and control plane operate within the data center and on external networks.
Network function virtualization enables a flexible, open architecture with several deployment choices and NFV software. A typical NFV architecture framework consists of three main layers.
Virtual network functions are software versions of network services such as load balancing, firewalls, IP multimedia subsystems, routing, and security. VNFs are often deployed as VMs using hypervisors running on COTS hardware. Cloud-native network function (CNF) is a VNF designed for the cloud environment. CNF, unlike VMs, runs in containers and is a VNF for the developing cloud environment.
The combination of all software and hardware components that make up the deployment environment for NFV is referred to as NFV infrastructure (NFVi). The NFV infrastructure can span many locations, and the networking hardware that links these sites is included in the NFVi.
NFVi consists of three infrastructure elements: compute, storage, and networking. The NFV infrastructure manager (VIM) supervises the distribution of resources for the VNFs. OpenStack is an open-source VIM that manages both physical and virtual resources.
NFV MANO administers and orchestrates the VNFs in the NFV architecture. MANO creates network services by automating, delivering, and coordinating operations for VIM and VNF managers, creating VNFs, and overlaying networking service chains. NFV MANO is responsible for the following:
Although much is being said about the benefits of introducing virtualization into the network, there’s some confusion between two related but distinct methodologies: software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV).
Software-defined networking is a paradigm that enables dynamic and programmatically efficient network set up to improve the overall network performance. Essentially, SDN makes networks programmable by separating the system that decides where to route the traffic (the control plane) from the underlying system that sends data packets to specific destinations (the data plane). This separation enables more automated provisioning and policy-based network resource management.
Network architects and administrators configure and manage network services using software from a single control point. This approach builds dynamic, flexible, and scalable networks that adapt quickly to changing business requirements by using the virtualized architecture of current data centers.
Network function virtualization is a network architecture that aims to speed up service deployment and reduce costs for network operators. NFV isolates functions such as routers and encryption from hardware and moves them to virtual servers, consolidating various functions on a physical server and ultimately lowering the overall costs. NFV enables network operators to implement network policies without worrying about where functions should be placed in the network or how traffic should be routed via these functions.
NFV is a method of virtualizing network functions typically running on hardware and hosting them on virtual machines. A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine manager, is used in VMs so that several operating systems can use a single hardware processor. This ensures networks with higher scalability, flexibility, and adaptability at a lower cost than traditional networks.
The key similarity between SDN and NFV is the usage of network abstraction. SDN attempts to isolate network control functions from network forwarding services, while NFV abstracts network forwarding and other networking functions from their hardware. As a result, both rely significantly on virtualization to abstract network architecture and infrastructure in software, which is subsequently deployed by underlying software across hardware platforms and devices.
When SDN runs on an NFV architecture, it transfers data packets from one network device to another. Simultaneously, SDN's networking control functions for routing, policy formulation, and applications execute in a VM on the network. Thus, NFV offers basic networking operations, but SDN regulates and orchestrates them for individual applications. SDN also specifies and updates configuration and behavior programmatically.
Network function virtualization has grown in popularity as a solution to numerous networking difficulties for many enterprises in various industrial and commercial sectors. With the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and increasing demand for ever more advanced services, NFV enables enterprises to design, provide, and simplify much more advanced services and operations while also reducing expenses through cost savings.
Here are some use cases of how NFV is employed to handle various obstacles and deliver superior results to improve services and reduce costs.
Telecom businesses worldwide primarily employ NFV solutions for network virtualization (NV). NV builds a virtual network on top of the physical network, allowing service providers to extend and expedite service development. It also improves critical network requirements such as provisioning.
Customers are turning to network virtualization to remove network operations such as DNS, caching, routing, and firewalling from the proprietary hardware that was earlier the leading option and enhancing their network services. This method also allows them to run on software instead of hardware.
When launching new network services, network virtualization provides vendors with the agility and flexibility they require. It allows them to save money on cumbersome physical hardware and the costs of operating, managing, and occasionally repairing it.
Due to technological innovations, the tools we use to secure our physical and virtual tools have evolved over the past decade. Many security providers now provide virtual firewalls to protect VMs. However, firewalls are only one of practically all security devices or components that NFV and SDN will ultimately virtualize.
The concept of centrally managed mechanisms and evenly distributed enforcement is one of the main advantages of virtualized security. These two benefits alone have led corporations to beef up their security and consider these security solutions.
Video analytics systems and software are another technology sector whose potential has grown dramatically since the advent of IoT. Businesses can now use IoT and smart devices to collect massive data from their factories, stores, and farms.
End-to-end network latency is one of the greatest challenges of modern networking, posing a substantial barrier to applications and network services susceptible to network delays, such as video analytics.
Businesses use NFV and SDN frameworks to address this issue and reduce network resource utilization and improve latency. With IoT and edge devices making it possible to create, gather, and analyze more and more data, video analytics software systems are becoming increasingly important to harness big data.
Mobile edge computing is another popular technological advancement. Edge devices can perform computational services and offer network functions by producing and deploying a single or even several VMs when using NFV.
Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a prime example of one of these technologies. MEC employs mobile edge computing to achieve ultra-low latencies. Here, edge computing refers to components such as radio towers, mini-data, and local data centers. Some of these mobile network service functions are translated from hardware to software using NFV.
The continuous expansion of 5G networks created this technology. The MEC uses discrete components identical to the NFV infrastructure in its architecture.
By reducing the constraints of manual methods and delivering services on-demand, network function virtualization increases agility in delivering network services while also increasing capital efficiency. NFV enables service providers to offer services more quickly and cost-effectively and harnesses automation to respond to customer demands for scalability and agility.
Here are some of the most critical advantages of network functions virtualization.
Network function virtualization in IoT or other virtualized infrastructure enables better workload performance with less power consumption, a smaller data center footprint, and decreased cooling requirements. Since a single server can run multiple VNFs simultaneously, fewer servers perform the same amount of work. As network demand varies, the software updates business infrastructure rather than physical appliance upgrades in data centers and network nodes.
When a data center or equivalent infrastructure is virtualized, it can accomplish more with limited resources since a single server can run multiple VNFs concurrently to do the same amount of work. It enables higher workload capacity while reducing data center footprint, power consumption, and cooling requirements. This removes proprietary physical equipment from the infrastructure, consolidates resources, and lowers costs.
Because COTS hardware is required to operate VNFs, companies can avoid vendor lock-in and proprietary equipment that’s costly to set up and install. Proprietary hardware from vendors can quickly become outdated. NFV enables standard hardware to perform network operations instead of dedicated devices. A virtualized network makes network configuration and management considerably easier.
Since VMs contain virtualized services, they receive sections of virtual resources on x86 servers, allowing numerous VMs to operate from a single server and scale more effectively based on the remaining resources. This directs idle resources where required and increases efficiency in data centers with virtualized infrastructures.
NFV also enables networks to swiftly and efficiently expand their resources in response to incoming traffic and resource requirements. SDN software also enables VMs to scale up and down automatically.
NFV improves a network's responsiveness, flexibility, and scalability. It shortens the time to market and drastically cuts infrastructure costs. There are, however, security hazards and network functions virtualization security concerns acting as barriers to widespread adoption among service providers.
Here are some of the most critical disadvantages of network functions virtualization.
Compared to physical equipment secured in a data center, virtualizing network components increases their exposure to new types of attacks. Malware travels between virtual components operating on the same VM more easily than between segregated or physically separated hardware components.
Many service providers find it challenging to adopt NFV at scale due to its complexity. The breadth and diverse components of the architecture make it challenging to develop, implement, and manage. The lack of stable standards for NFV implementations continues to hinder deployments. It has taken years to develop NFV implementations from labs, proof-of-concept trials, field testing, and full-scale solutions in production networks.
An NFV-based network has several benefits over a traditional network, including enhanced flexibility, faster time-to-market, better scalability, and lower costs. NFV is still a developing technology with few well-defined standards and its own set of challenges.
Furthermore, if IT teams need to update hardware to match the needs of NFV-based workloads, the cost savings may not be as significant. Nonetheless, NFV has a lot of potential and will most certainly be around for a long time. With 5G networks on the horizon, the telecoms sector, in particular, is greatly interested in NFV.
Virtual network functions (VNFs) are a critical component of an NFV infrastructure and a must-have for organizations building next-generation service architectures.