Chu
348
● Device requirements: e.g. battery life;
● Enhanced services: e.g. security, location services;
● New business models: XaaS; and
● Network deployment, operation and management: innovation agility, flexibility,
operational efficiency.
By this broad definition of 5G, NFV and related technologies (e.g. SDN, telco cloud
computing) are an integral part of what it means to be 5G. How we experience a 5G
network as a consumer, an operator, or as a business or partner will be defined or made
possible by the ideas and technologies of NFV. While some may still stick to a narrower
view of defining 5G in terms of radio technology advances, it is clear to us that achieving
the diverse use case goals in much broader industries outside of traditional mobile
internet access and the success of 5G commercial ecosystems require NFV.
Regardless of how we prescribe the importance of NFV to 5G by definition or by
necessity, we will look at the intersections of 5G and NFV in this chapter, and explore
the problems and opportunities in the security domain. We will assume that readers
are familiar with wireless networks and 5G. We start with a short introduction to NFV,
and a section discussing the overlaps and differences of NFV, SDN and other cloud
computing technologies. For the remainder of this chapter, we will use the term NFV
in a broader sense to mean the wide body of technologies known collectively as
“NFV and related technologies”. In other literature, people may also use terms such as
Software Defined Infrastructure or Telco Cloud to mean the same concept of a cloud
and software‐centric infrastructure system.
15.3 A Brief Introduction to NFV
In the fall of 2012, a group of technologists from major telecom operators authored a
white paper [2] that popularized the ideas around network function virtualization and
served as a call to action. A few months later, in January 2013, the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) launched the first of a series of NFV
focused meetings in Sophia‐Antipolis, France. This was the beginning of the NFV ISG
(Industry Specification Group) [3] with a different working model that distinguishes
itself from more traditional telecom industry standard bodies by refraining from heavy
and rigid standard specifications and by embracing widely successful IT industry technologies and approaches such as commodity hardware, virtualization, software defined
networking, cloud computing and open‐source.
From the very beginning, the moniker NFV spanned a wide range of meanings. As a
start, NFV means implementing network systems by using commodity servers, storage
and network switches and realization of the network functions in software. However,
the mandate of NFV goes far beyond this narrow scope. It encompasses the use of
general‐purpose operating systems, hypervisors and containers, cloud management
software that enables XaaS, and the transformation of the network’s OSS (operations
support systems) and BSS (business support systems).
Let us first look at the simpler, narrow case of NFV. Figure 15.1 is a graphic depiction
of this transformation of moving from vertically‐integrated physical appliances to virtual
appliances implemented on a virtualized infrastructure, based on a pool of commodity
348
● Device requirements: e.g. battery life;
● Enhanced services: e.g. security, location services;
● New business models: XaaS; and
● Network deployment, operation and management: innovation agility, flexibility,
operational efficiency.
By this broad definition of 5G, NFV and related technologies (e.g. SDN, telco cloud
computing) are an integral part of what it means to be 5G. How we experience a 5G
network as a consumer, an operator, or as a business or partner will be defined or made
possible by the ideas and technologies of NFV. While some may still stick to a narrower
view of defining 5G in terms of radio technology advances, it is clear to us that achieving
the diverse use case goals in much broader industries outside of traditional mobile
internet access and the success of 5G commercial ecosystems require NFV.
Regardless of how we prescribe the importance of NFV to 5G by definition or by
necessity, we will look at the intersections of 5G and NFV in this chapter, and explore
the problems and opportunities in the security domain. We will assume that readers
are familiar with wireless networks and 5G. We start with a short introduction to NFV,
and a section discussing the overlaps and differences of NFV, SDN and other cloud
computing technologies. For the remainder of this chapter, we will use the term NFV
in a broader sense to mean the wide body of technologies known collectively as
“NFV and related technologies”. In other literature, people may also use terms such as
Software Defined Infrastructure or Telco Cloud to mean the same concept of a cloud
and software‐centric infrastructure system.
15.3 A Brief Introduction to NFV
In the fall of 2012, a group of technologists from major telecom operators authored a
white paper [2] that popularized the ideas around network function virtualization and
served as a call to action. A few months later, in January 2013, the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) launched the first of a series of NFV
focused meetings in Sophia‐Antipolis, France. This was the beginning of the NFV ISG
(Industry Specification Group) [3] with a different working model that distinguishes
itself from more traditional telecom industry standard bodies by refraining from heavy
and rigid standard specifications and by embracing widely successful IT industry technologies and approaches such as commodity hardware, virtualization, software defined
networking, cloud computing and open‐source.
From the very beginning, the moniker NFV spanned a wide range of meanings. As a
start, NFV means implementing network systems by using commodity servers, storage
and network switches and realization of the network functions in software. However,
the mandate of NFV goes far beyond this narrow scope. It encompasses the use of
general‐purpose operating systems, hypervisors and containers, cloud management
software that enables XaaS, and the transformation of the network’s OSS (operations
support systems) and BSS (business support systems).
Let us first look at the simpler, narrow case of NFV. Figure 15.1 is a graphic depiction
of this transformation of moving from vertically‐integrated physical appliances to virtual
appliances implemented on a virtualized infrastructure, based on a pool of commodity