NFV Standards Update

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For example, just because it’s possible, it might not always make the most business sense to opt for a virtualized solution over on-premise for a specific workload.

In 2014, ETSI’s NFV specification group drove academic research into the following areas to support the development of the NFV ecosystem:

Security of the virtualized infrastructure for network functions
Abstractions for networks and carrier‐scale network services in imperative and declarative languages
Impacts of data plane workloads on Computer Systems Architectures
Locality and latency in software implementations of large‐scale network services
Re‐architecting network functions (e.g. 3GPP) to recognize availability of cloud technology mechanisms for scalability and reliability
Evolution patterns to NFV, management of transition and heterogeneous scenarios
Portability mechanisms and management across NFV infrastructure realizations
Tools for validating network services and automating their deployment and management
Applying compositional patterns (Network Function Chains) for parallelism, control logic, performance, monitoring and reliability of network services
Monitoring and metering of carrier‐scale virtualized networks. Application of Big Data models
Addressing the privacy implications of the new virtualized network service models. Relying on NFV to increase user privacy at the network scale
Exploring how the new virtualization support paradigms can facilitate new network concepts and architectures
Operationalization of NFV with diagnostic and support frameworks
Commercial and Economic impact of NFV on ecosystems autonomic (self) management technologies in NFV (e.g., processing of alarms)
Complexity of NFV systems
Energy Efficiency of NFV systems
Performance optimization, tradeoffs & planning rules for multiple VNF workloads
New service modelling and algorithms for automatic changes of virtual network services architecture
What "Next Big Thing(s)" will be enabled post‐NFV?

On December 4, ETSI announced that NFV had entered into “phase 2” of development.

“Operator participants are extremely pleased with the outcomes of NFV Phase 1”, stated Don Clarke, Chair of the NFV Network Operator Council. “Few of us could have anticipated how fast this initiative would grow and how influential it would become. As we enter Phase 2, operators’ expectations continue to rise. We are very conscious of the fact that vendors are investing significant resources to develop NFV capability. It is, therefore, very important to stay focused and maintain our momentum to create opportunities for NFV deployment.”

Operators and vendors alike have applauded benefits of the ISG’s approach to the work and innovative standardization cooperation model, built upon assertive goals, pragmatism, lightweight process, and unprecedented collaboration, allowing the first phase to be completed in record time.

ETSI says the planning for NFV Phase 2 is now complete and work has commenced with agreement on the objectives and scope to:

Grow an interoperable NFV Ecosystem
Specify reference points and requirements defined in Phase 1
Further grow industry engagement to ensure that NFV requirements are satisfied
Clarify how NFV intersects with SDN and related standards, industry, and open source initiatives

Steven Wright, Chair of the ETSI NFV ISG, observed, “I am very encouraged by the increasing enthusiasm amongst operators and partners alike. The NFV community that we have fostered has never been more robust. While we have challenges to overcome, broad industry participation has resulted in a healthy debate on our Phase 2 plans, which are converging as expected.”

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