ZTE

ZTE Communications ›› 2013, Vol. 11 ›› Issue (4): 40-46.doi: DOI:10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2013.04.006

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Virtualizing Network and Service Functions: Impact on ICT Transformation and Standardization

Bhumip Khasnabish1, Jie Hu2, and Ghazanfar Ali2   

  1. 1. Strategy Planning and Standards Development, ZTE TX Inc., Morristown, NJ 07960, USA;
    2. Strategy Planning Department, ZTE Nanjing R&D Center, Nanjing 210012, China
  • Received:2013-09-30 Online:2013-12-25 Published:2013-12-25
  • About author:Bhumip Khasnabish (bhumip.khasnabish@ztetx.com, b.khasnabish@ieee.org), Phd, AMCPM, is a senior member of the IEEE and an emeritus distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. He has initiated cloud and data center activities in IETF and is vice-chair of DMTF NSM WG (previously co-chaired ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF), and founded and chaired ATIS NG-CI TF and MSF Services WG). He is currently a senior director in the Strategy Planning Department of ZTE TX Inc., USA. His research interests include next-generation networking, platform and services that use virtualized computing and communication entities, tighter cross-layer communications, and system configuration/services automation. He has worked in the Verizon/GTE next-generation Laboratories, Waltham, MA, and in Bell-Northern Research (BNR) Ltd. in Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Khasnabish has published numerous articles, books, and book chapters and has been awarded several patents in his research areas.

    Jie Hu (hu.jie@zte.com.cn) received his MS degree in computer science from Southeast University, China. He is the standards director of cloud computing platform of ZTE Corporation. He has been an editor in several standards organizations, including CCSA, OMA, ITU-T on CDN, Mobile Search, and Cloud Computing RA.

    Ghazanfar Ali (ghazanfarali@zte.com.cn) received his MS degree in computer science from Quad-e-Azam University, Islamabad. He is an advanced standards research engineer in the Strategy Planning Department of ZTE Corporation and represents ZTE Corporation as a vice chair at DMTF Cloud Management Sub-Committee (CMSC). His major distinctions include contribution of about 400 technical proposals in different technical standards developed in ITU SG13, OMA, and DMTF. His research interests include software-defined computing and virtual appliances.

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Abstract: Virtualization of network/service functions means time-sharing network/service (and affiliated) resources in a hyper-speed manner. The concept of time sharing was popularized in the 1970s with mainframe computing. The same concept has recently resurfaced under the guise of cloud computing and virtualized computing. Although cloud computing was originally used in IT for server virtualization, the ICT industry is taking a new look at virtualization. This paradigm shift is shaking up the computing, storage, networking, and service industries. The hope is that virtualizing and automating configuration and service management/orchestration will save both capes and opex for network transformation. A complimentary trend is the separation (over an open interface) of control and transmission. This is commonly referred to as software-defined networking (SDN). This paper reviews trends in network/service functions, efforts to standardize these functions, and required management and orchestration.

Key words: network function virtualization (NFV) and chaining, service function virtualization (SFV) and chaining, network virtualization overlay (NVO), software-defined networking (SDN), networking economics