Network-as-a-Service Architecture with SDN and NFV

Abstract

The Internet continues to grow exponentially with proliferation of devices and users being connected to it along with an exploding demand for various resource and performance intensive network services like multimedia content distribution, security, mobility, and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. However, the current TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) based Internet architecture, which was developed over 40 years ago and was not prepared nor designed to successfully meet such explosive demands of today, is leading to the growing ossification of the Internet with its increasingly closed, complex, and rigid state. Thus, limiting innovation in such networks and their corresponding services. To overcome this ossification problem of the Internet coupled with a lack of innovation in provisioning and management of network services, more and more service providers and network operators are embracing the concept of virtualization for their networks. This trend is largely inspired by the recent success of cloud-based service models along with their chief enabler virtualization in addressing similar problems in the computing and storage fields of Information Technology (IT). Although recent advances in the field of networking are witnessing new virtualization enabling network technologies being proposed, it is still a challenge to logically combine a set of them to realize cloud-based service models for service provider networks. This situation is mainly due to the concerns over these proposed technologies in terms of scalability, reliability, interoperability, and disruptive nature. In this thesis, an evolutionary approach to implementing the Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) cloud-based service model for service provider networks is proposed with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) as its key virtualization enabling network technologies. In essence, the proposed evolutionary approach realizes the major benefits of network virtualization such as vendor-neutrality, simplicity, and flexibility while successfully addressing the stated concerns over SDN and NFV technologies in the proposed NaaS architecture. Furthermore, a proof-of-concept (PoC) implementation of the proposed NaaS architecture on a physical network testbed is demonstrated along with an innovative provisioning and management of basic network connectivity services over it. Finally, the proposed evolutionary approach is validated by an experimental performance evaluation of the PoC physical network testbed along with the recommendations for improvement and future work.