Management and Orchestration of Network Slices in 5G, Fog, Edge and Clouds

TL;DR

This paper surveys the management and orchestration of network slices across 5G, Fog, Edge, and Cloud platforms, focusing on technologies like SDN and NFV, and discusses future challenges and trends.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of network slicing techniques and management strategies across multiple platforms, highlighting gaps and future research directions.

Findings

Survey of state-of-the-art slicing approaches in 5G, Fog, and Cloud

Identification of challenges in end-to-end slice orchestration

Discussion of future trends and research gaps

Abstract

Network slicing allows network operators to build multiple isolated virtual networks on a shared physical network to accommodate a wide variety of services and applications. With network slicing, service providers can provide a cost-efficient solution towards meeting diverse performance requirements of deployed applications and services. Despite slicing benefits, End-to-End orchestration and management of network slices is a challenging and complicated task. In this chapter, we intend to survey all the relevant aspects of network slicing, with the focus on networking technologies such as Software-defined networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) in 5G, Fog/Edge and Cloud Computing platforms. To build the required background, this chapter begins with a brief overview of 5G, Fog/Edge and Cloud computing, and their interplay. Then we cover the 5G vision for network slicing and extend it to the Fog and Cloud computing through surveying the state-of-the-art slicing approaches in these platforms. We conclude the chapter by discussing future directions, analyzing gaps and trends towards the network slicing realization.