'Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)'
Doi
Abstract
Network operators are under pressure to offer efficient network-based services while keeping
service deployment costs to a minimum. Network functions virtualization (NFV) can potentially revolutionize network-based services bringing low-deployment costs for network operators. The NFV has been
introduced to ultimately extend the non-proprietary and open-standard-based model to network and service
deployments, significant improvements to today’s proprietary locked implementations. Notwithstanding the
continuous efforts of both academia and industry to support the NFV paradigm, the current NFV solutions
offered are still in its infancy. In this survey, we provide a detailed background of NFV to establish a
comprehensive understanding of the subject, ranging from the basics to more advanced topics. Moreover,
we offer a comprehensive overview of the NFV main concepts, standardization efforts, the benefits of NFV,
and discussions of the NFV architecture as defined by the European telecommunications standardization
institute (ETSI). Furthermore, we discuss the NFV applicability and current open source projects. We then
highlight NFV requirements, design considerations, and developmental architectural impairments and
barriers to commercial NFV deployments. Finally, we conclude enumerating future directions for NFV
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