A solution for SGi-LAN services virtualization using NFV and SDN

Today operators deploy functions like Deep Packet Inspection, Caches, traffic optimization, NAT and Firewall on the SGi/Gi-LAN for subscribers accessing Internet based content/services. Currently these functions are deployed on dedicated hardware components from different vendors that most often need to be managed separately. This is not cost efficient and gives long lead times for new services. The main contribution of this paper is the implementation of a solution for virtualizing the services on the SGi-LAN using NFV and SDN. The virtualized services include TCP optimization, video optimization and network analytics. In addition, a performance evaluation is presented with focus on key indicators for virtualization. It is shown that virtualizing network functions on servers using NFV adds an overhead of 20-40 μ seconds in latency per hop, but that the impact on the network function performance is negligible. It is also shown that a COTS server can support a single instance of the SDN controller programming 100K OpenFlow transactions/second and that a software switch can implement 100K rules/sec while forwarding traffic at 160 Gbps with 200M rules. To evaluate the scaling feature of NFV it is shown that the time to bring up a new virtual network function was between 90-120 seconds.