How NFV Can Enable 'Pay-as-you-Protect' Network Protection

A real-time look at network activity observed during five-second intervals is shown in Figure 3, demonstrating 20,000 attack flows (4,000 flows/second x 5 seconds) observed and mitigated (i.e., scrubbed).

Since this attack volume is capably handled by a single VNF instance, the MANO element has not yet triggered a second instance.

Fig. 3 -  Live network data show the small attack during the first part of the demonstration; this summarizes a five-second
window, so the 4,000 flows per second is represented as 20,000 observed attack flows

For the next part of the demonstration, the attack scale is increased to 12,000 flows per second (Figure 4).

Fig. 4 - Launchpad: Dashboard showing the 12,000 flows per second used in the second stage of the demonstration

For this demonstration, the MANO element is configured to scale up a new VNF instance for every 10,000 flows; Figure 5 shows that the 12,000 flows per second attack has caused another instance to begin scaling. In the meantime, the single initial VNF instance is able to handle the larger attack.

Fig. 5 - Ubuntu administration panel showing another PTS instance being scaled up