One thing that is probably clear to everyone who reads about SDN or NFV these days is that there is no real consensus on what either actually do, or should do. There’s a lot of confusion out there, inhibiting a strong consensus on what SDN or NFV can do, separately or together, and what other…
Standards documents are definitely not entertaining reads, even important ones. The ETSI ISG published its “Report on SDN Usage in NFV Architectural Framework” prior to the last ISG meeting, and I’ve been reading through it. There are a lot of interesting and useful things in it, and some things that I think are problematic, but…
Since networking is a kind of massive cooperative behavior set, it’s not surprising that the critical networking technology “revolutions” we face have a relationship. What is surprising is that the relationship isn’t all that clear. Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), and software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) share some technology elements and they may also…
It’s the first working day of 2016, and I guess I have a kind of obligation to talk about what to expect the rest of this year on the biggest issue facing telecom—operator return on infrastructure. We stand a year from the time when operators said that falling revenue per bit and insufficient progress in…
Years ago I was a member of the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA), involved in electronic data interchange (EDI). This body provided message interface specifications for common business transactions, and because of that you could say it was a very early (and widely successful) example of M2M. I was thinking about EDI yesterday, and I…
In a recent interview Verizon’s CEO talked about a three-tier strategy for the company. You start with the best connectivity, add platforms that can drive traffic, and then add content, applications, and solutions selectively where you need an ecosystem. While the interview was focused on mobile plans, you can see it has potentially broader value…
If there is a network operator who epitomizes the understanding of the real requirements for the next-generation carrier network, it is Telefonica. If there is a vendor who has the product elements needed to make a complete business case for NFV, it’s HPE. Yet we heard on Christmas Eve that Telefonica was terminating HPE’s integration…
In my recent group of blogs I’ve covered the main issues with openness in NFV. What I’d like to do in closing this series is describe what could be an effective and open NFV model. There are probably a lot of ways to skin the NFV cat, but this one has been proven out in…
When cloud computing came along, it was clear that the process of deploying multi-component applications and connecting pieces to each other and to users was complicated. Without some form of automation, in fact, it’s likely that the deployment would be so error-prone as to threaten the stability and business case for the cloud. What developed…
Network functions virtualization (NFV) is supposed to be about running network service features on commodity servers using “virtualization”. While the vCPE edge-hosting movement has demonstrated that there’s significant value in running virtual functions in other ways, virtualization and the cloud is still the “official” focus of the ETSI work, and what most think will be…