Integrated NFV/SDN Architectures: A Systematic Literature Review

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews integrated NFV/SDN architectures, analyzing their designs, challenges, and future research directions to advance the development of flexible, reliable, and scalable network solutions.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth synthesis of current NFV/SDN architectural designs and identifies key areas for future improvements and research.

Findings

Comprehensive overview of NFV/SDN architectures

Identification of reliability, performance, and scalability challenges

Guidance for future research directions

Abstract

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are new paradigms in the move towards open software and network hardware. While NFV aims to virtualize network functions and deploy them into general purpose hardware, SDN makes networks programmable by separating the control and data planes. NFV and SDN are complementary technologies capable of providing one network solution. SDN can provide connectivity between Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in a flexible and automated way, whereas NFV can use SDN as part of a service function chain. There are many studies designing NFV/SDN architectures in different environments. Researchers have been trying to address reliability, performance, and scalability problems using different architectural designs. This Systematic Literature Review (SLR) focuses on integrated NFV/SDN architectures, with the following goals: i) to investigate and provide an in-depth review of the state-of-the-art of NFV/SDN architectures, ii) to synthesize their architectural designs, and iii) to identify areas for further improvements. Broadly, this SLR will encourage researchers to advance the current stage of development (i.e., the state-of-the-practice) of integrated NFV/SDN architectures, and shed some light on future research efforts and the challenges faced.