T-NOVA: A marketplace for virtualized network functions
George K. Xilouris, Eleni Trouva, F. J. Lobillo, J. M. Soares, Jorge Carapinha, Michael J. McGrath, Georgios Gardikis, Pietro Paglierani, Evangelos Pallis, Letterio Zuccaro, Yacine Rebahi, Akis Kourtis · 2014
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a concept, which has attracted significant attention as a promising approach towards the virtualization/“softwarisation” of network infrastructures. With the aim of promoting NFV, this paper outlines an integrated architecture, designed and developed within the context of the EU FP7 T-NOVA project, which allows network operators not only to deploy virtualized Network Functions (NFs) for their own needs, but also to offer them to their customers, as value-added services (Network Functions as-a-Service, NFaaS). Virtual network appliances (gateways, proxies, firewalls, transcoders, analyzers etc.) can be provided on-demand as-a-Service, eliminating the need to acquire, install and maintain specialized hardware at customers' premises. A “NFV Marketplace” is also introduced, where network services and functions created by a variety of developers can be published, acquired and instantiated on-demand.