Towards a virtual network function research agenda: A systematic literature review of VNF design considerations

摘要

The traditional hardware-based physical network functions are increasingly being replaced with software-only Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). A systematic review on the VNF, scoped to cover research papers, open source projects, and standards, is conducted in this work. The review identifies a globally recognized technology trend towards the implementations of VNFs. Based on the design criteria proposed and analyzed in this paper, and the research questions used to structure this review, a window on the current state of the art for VNFs is provided to establish a research agenda. Common themes in future research directions for VNFs are identified. These include: better ways of managing VNF state information to improve flexibility and agility during load balancing, failover, and life cycle operations, and designing VNFs to enable their transparent migration across central and edge clouds.