On the Implementation of NFV over an OpenFlow Infrastructure: Routing Function Virtualization

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has emerged as an operator proposal for offering network services with network functions implemented in software, which may be located in Data Centers, network nodes or even in a virtual machine. NFV is theoretically applicable to any network function and aims at simplifying the management of heterogeneous hardware platforms. Using as a basis one of the network functions offered by network routers, this article presents the analysis, design, and the first implementation, in a virtualized manner, of the routing function. Considering the current co-existence of IPv4 and IPv6 and the possibilities brought into the arena by OpenFlow-enabled infrastructures, the article describes the design of the virtualized routing protocol, enabling a simple management and avoiding signaling messages overhead in the control plane level, and the different scenarios considered to validate the virtualized function. In essence, the manuscript describes one of the first implementations of the functional NFV concept, through the virtualization of the routing function over an OpenFlow network. The different scenarios validated in the article are used to demonstrate the applicability of the NFV-powered implementation proposed into actual production environments.