Survey of Software-defined Networks and

Network Function Virtualization (NFV)

Nayra Farghaly
The American University in Cairo
900163417

Abstract— This paper is discussing two particularly important technologies in networking which
are the Software-defined Networks and Network Function Virtualization. As computer networks
are complex and dynamic, consequently, managing and dealing with them continues to be
incredibly challenging. So, in this paper, it will be surveying two important technologies that
helps and provides better mechanisms for common network management and configuration tasks
across a variety of different types of networks, which are the Software-defined networks and
Network Function Virtualization.

Keywords— SDN, NFV, Software-defined Networks, Network Function Virtualization

Section 1:

I. INTRODUCTION

The networks are conventionally composed of an interconnection of hardware, such as: firewalls,
switches, and routers. The internet resulted in the virtualization of everything around us. Starting
from education, shopping, entertainment and ending with our computing and much more.by this
we can say that most important thing to become virtually is our networks. As network
virtualization is the key success factor for the cloud computing So, many technologies and new
standards came into real life as a result, trying to achieve the virtualization of the networks. This
paper is surveying two important technologies that are used for virtualizing the network.

Section 2: Core topic

II. SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKS

A. What is SDN?
It is a software that is designed to make a network more flexible and easier to manage. It
centralizes the management by abstracting the control plane from the data forwarding function in
the discrete networking devices. It focuses on four important key features which are:
• Separation of the control plane from the data plane,
• A centralized controller and view of the network
• Open interfaces between the devices in the control plane and the data plane
• Programmability of the network by external applications
Also, SDN was introduced due to the lack of programmability when it comes to classical or
traditional networks.

B. SDN Architecture

The architecture of the SDN is composed of 3 main layers which are the data plane layer, it is the
infrastructure of the whole SDN, it contains the hardware devices as the switches, routers, and
other appliances. The second layer is the control plane layer where there exists the centralized
controller which maintains both the global and the dynamic view. Its main role is to take the
requests from the Management plane layer and to manage the devices by following certain
protocols. And the third layer is the application layer, where the responsibility of covering the
arrays of the application exists.
III. NETWORK FUNCTION VIRTUALIZATION

A. Network virtualization
Network virtualization refers to condensing network resources that are basically delivered to
software and hardware. It can combine more than one physical network to one virtual, software-
based network. Moreover, it can do the vice versa as it can divide and separate one physical
network to independent virtual networks. It allows provisioning of an entire network virtually.
Where the physical components of a network like switches and routers can be accessed through
any user by using a centralized management system. In addition to that, it enables the automation
or various administrative tasks. Whereas, it decreases the manual errors and the time of
provisioning. By this it will be providing better network productivity and efficiency. Examples
of it, VLAN, which is a subsection of the LAN where it is created by a software that combines
the network devices into 1 group. The VLANs boosts the speed and the performance of the busy
networks and simplifies the changes and addition to the network. This technology is somehow
considered to be an old technology. However, it is so crucial an important for some enterprises
up till now. It has the capability of allocating the devices without any distraction in the virtual
environment.
B. Network Function Virtualization
The Network function virtualization was proposed in order to improve some deficiencies of the
flexibility of network service provisioning. Stepping towards implementing a cheaper agile
network infrastructure, here comes the role of the NFV. It helped in allowing a dramatically
changes in the world of the telecommunications, it helps in reducing the investment of the capital
and the energy consumption. It is basically the replacement of the network appliance hardware
with virtual machines running software and processes, that is controlled by a hypervisor. Why
NFV? Because it allows the occurrence of separation of communication services from the
dedicated hardware as routers, switches, and firewalls. Those virtualized services allow their
running on generic servers instead of proprietary hardware. The NFV came to existence because
of deficiencies and problems that were caused by the classical network virtualization. Some of
those deficiencies is, having a fixed located device which were located at the edge of the network
data center with the VM allocated all over the network which caused a lot of traffic causing
overheads and lack of efficiency.
C. NFV Architecture
The idea behind the NFV is to implement a network functions that can run over a wide range of
industry standard server hardware, and this can be portable and be installed in various locations
in the network. The architecture of the NFV is composed of 4 parts which are the (VNF ) layer,
which is composed of 2 subsections, (VNF) and (EMS), this is the basic block of the
architecture, where it virtualizes the network functions. The second component of the NFV
architecture is the (NFVI) layer, it is basically the environment where the VNFs is deployed at
regarding the software and the hardware. The VFNs are also managed and executed at this layer.
The third component of the NFV architecture is the (OSS) layer, this layer is responsible for 4
important issues which are the network management, fault management, configuration
management, and service management. And the last layer of the NFV architecture is the
(MANO) layer, this layer is composed of 3 important components, the virtualized infrastructure
manager, VNF manager and the orchestrator. It is main role is to manage the resources that are in
the infrastructure layer and to create, delete resources and manage their allocation in the VNFs.
D. Technical Challenges for the NFV
There are some challenges that is faced be the NFV such as:
 Security challenge, which is the virtualization environment domain (Hypervisor) , this
can be overcome by the isolation of the served virtual machine space, with access
provided only with authentication controls.
 Computing performance, where the virtualized network function should provide
comparable performance to network functions running on proprietary hardware
equipment, the NVF can achieve higher performance by following some techniques such
 as multithreading , independent memory structures, implementing its own stack and has
direct access to I/O interfaces.
 Interconnection challenge, where the virtualized environment has different approaches
from the classical network function interconnection, and this can be overcome by the
NVF taking the advantage of accelerated V switches and use NICs that are single-root
I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) compliant
Section 3:
IV. DISCUSSION SDN and NFV

The NFV and the SDN are two different independent technologies. However, they are
complimentary to each other. The NFV is the concept of transferring the network functions from
dedicated hardware appliances to software-based applications, it also decouples the network
functions from the proprietary hardware without affecting the functionality. While the SDN is
concerned in network functionalities as it decouples the control and the data planes. And it also
provides centralized controller and network programmability. And both are concerned with some
common issues such as: providing programmable connectivity between the VNFs, while these
connections can be managed by the orchestrator of the VNFs which will mimic the role of the
SDN controller. Moreover, NFV serves the SDN by implementing its network functions in a
software manner. So combining both technologies together will result in a beneficial result as
they are two powerful technologies that allows the acquiring of the required infrastructure for
building their solution without the need to invest in a huge capital for owning such resources.
These will work as a substitute for investing so much money in buying servers for running
businesses. Not only it will substitute the cost of the servers, but also it will eliminate the need of
paying for an internet server provider which is also a great cost for a business to acquire.

Section 4:
V. Conclusion

To conclude, with the advancements in technologies nowadays, the problems that both
the SDN and NFV were able to solve, gave the opportunity for the developers to be able to focus
on the network functionality without having to worry about the underlying hardware due to the
abstractions they offer. Hence, we give a description about both of them along with their
advantages and technical challenges, and then discuss both of them to illustrate the similarities
and differences.
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