The Creation Phase in Network Slicing: From a Service Order to an Operative Network Slice

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive SDN/NFV architecture supporting multi-tenant network slicing, detailing the deployment stages from service order to operational network slice, enabling flexible, automated, and isolated slice provisioning for 5G systems.

Contribution

It presents a detailed architecture and deployment process for network slices, addressing critical issues like mapping requirements, admission control, and descriptor information in a multi-domain environment.

Findings

Supports on-the-fly deployment of multiple tenant slices

Ensures isolation guarantees for each network slice

Enables fully automated slice provisioning and operation

Abstract

Network slicing is considered a key mechanism to serve the multitude of tenants (e.g. vertical industries) targeted by forthcoming 5G systems in a flexible and cost-efficient manner. In this paper, we present a SDN/NFV architecture with multi-tenancy support. This architecture enables a network slice provider to deploy network slice instances for multiple tenants on-the-fly, and simultaneously provision them with isolation guarantees. Following the Network Slice as-a-Service delivery model, a tenant may access a Service Catalog, selecting the slice that best fits its needs and ordering its deployment. This work provides a detailed view on the stages that a network slice provider must follow to deploy the ordered network slice instance, accommodating it into a multi-domain infrastructure, and putting it operative for tenant's consumption. These stages address critical issues identified in the literature, including (i) the mapping from high-level service requirements to network functions and infrastructure requirements, (ii) the admission control, and (iii) the specific information a network slice descriptor should have. With the proposed architecture and the recommended set of stages, network slice providers can deploy (and later operate) slice instances with great agility, flexibility, and full automation.