Name enhanced SDN framework for service function chaining of elastic Network functions

Abstract

Middleboxes have become an integral part of Internet infrastructure, providing additional flow processing for policy control, security, and performance optimization. Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) proposes the deployment of software-based middleboxes on top of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), enabling the dynamic adjustment of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), both in terms of instance numbers and computational power. The performance of Data center and Enterprise networks depend strongly on efficient scaling of VNFs and the traffic load balance across VNF instances. To this end, we present Name enhanced SDN framework for service function chaining of elastic Network functions (NSN) that extends the Function-Centric Service Chaining (FCSC) with load balancing functionalities to achieve efficient network utilization while reducing the switch flow rules by 2-4× compared to traditional SDN approaches.