NFV has two “visible” components—the virtual network functions that provide service features and the management and orchestration logic that deploys and sustains them. It also has a critical, complicated, often-ignored third function, which is the network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVI). NFVI is the pool of resources that VNFs and MANO can exploit, and its contents…
I made a comment in an earlier blog about “orchestration” in the context of service chaining, and a few people messaged me saying they thought the whole orchestration topic was confusing. They’re right, and since it’s very important for a wide range of things in tech these days this is a good time to try…
Light Reading has reported that on one of the OFC panels, both vendors and operators expressed concern about the “hype” and even the number of standards bodies associated with SDN. You all know my view about hype and any new technology; we seem to live in a “bandwagon” age where anything that has momentum gets…
We seem to be in the heart of a true avalanche of industry events, and that always creates a parallel avalanche of news. There’s always the question of whether a given news item is actually relevant, of course, and I thought it might be helpful to look at optical networking before the action gets underway. …
The closing panel of the ONS raised what I think was the most relevant question of all for SDN—how can its value be promoted? It’s a critical question for any technology revolution to answer because without the right answer to it, no revolution will really ever occur. But while the question of value is the…
I promised some of my blog readers that I’d do a deeper dive into the current state of NFV implementations. One of the challenges that poses is defining just what an NFV implementation is, because NFV means different things to different people and because there’s an ungodly amount of NFV hype out there. Another challenge…
One of the things we always hear about during SDN events is the SDN/optical relationship and the topic of “flattening” the network. You’d think that network architects everywhere were out there with mallets, eyeing their infrastructure for possible points of attack. Another thing we hear about is “Level 4/7 networking”, so apparently we’re looking for…
SDN is the senior partner in the reformation of the network, and this week’s ONF event makes it certain that SDN will be getting more attention. There’s no question that operators are working hard on applying SDN to address their problems and opportunities, but it should be clear to everyone that SDN is also a…
Our industry is driven by a lot of almost-hidden forces as well as by the more obvious buyer/seller tension. One of the most significant is the responsibility that a public company has to its shareholders. While we talk all the time about how companies need to “listen to their customers”, the fact is that a…
The Mobile World Congress event is arguably the most important carrier show, in no small part because mobile services are about the last bastion of profitability for operators globally. This year, we had for the first time quite a bit of NFV stuff presented at the show, and that’s important for the same reason the…