Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization: bridging the world of virtual networks Roberto Morabito Department of Communications and Networking (Comnet), Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
[email protected] Abstract— Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are two emerging and complementary concepts that can be considered as key players in the virtual networks world. In particular, SDN allows managing different network services through abstraction of higher-level functionality, while NFV leverages the use of virtualization technologies to virtualize specific network functions. Although SDN and NFV are considered stand-alone technologies, they are often put in relationship, because their connections, and overlapped use cases. In this paper, we present a short survey providing an overview of the two different models, highlighting the complementarities, together with the standardization activities and the open source community efforts to make these two paradigms connected to each other. Keywords—Software Defined Networking; SDN; Network Function Virtualization; NFV; I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. SDN architecture [4] [INTRODUCTION] à [1,2,3] The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we summarize general background information B. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) about Software Defined Networking (SDN), and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Section III clarifies the distinctions between SDN and NFV, however emphasizing [6], [7] point of contact and common use cases. In Section IV, a quick overview of ongoing standardization efforts is presented, together with the activities of the Open Source community in the virtual networks world. Section V concludes the paper providing final remarks. II. BACKGROUND In this section, we provide an overview of the different approaches, which are object of the paper.