Introduction: This second article on Light Reading’s NFV-Data Center conference summarizes telco keynote speeches from Orange and NTT-America. We then look at security challenges and wrap up with our summary and conclusions. Part 1. on the Heavy Reading NFV survey results and CenturyLink keynote may be read here. Orange Keynote: Christos Kolias, Sr. Research Scientist, Orange – Silicon Valley Christos first described the the NFV Concept and Vision from his perspective as a founding member of the ETSI NFV specifications group. It’s a quantum shift from dedicated network equipment to” virtual appliances.” In the NFV model, various types of dedicated network appliance boxes (e.g. message router, CDN equipment, Session Border Controller, WAN acceleration, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), Firewall, Carrier grade IP Network Address Translation (NAT), Radio/Fixed Access Network Nodes, QoS monitor/tester, etc.) become “virtual appliances,” which are software entities that run on a high performance compute server. In other words, higher layer network functions become software-based, virtual appliances, with multiple roles over the same commodity hardware and with remote operation possible. “It’s a very dynamic environment, where (software based) network functions can move around a lot. It’s extremely easy to scale,” according to Christos. [One assumes that each such virtual appliance […]
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