Over the past decade, many organizations have adopted virtualization technologies at an accelerated rate. There are several reasons computer networking needs to be virtualized. The five most common reasons are Sharing, Isolation, Aggregation, Dynamics, and Ease of management. However, you can gain more value from Network Virtualization and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) so that your business can compete with the global cloud providers in terms of greater speed and efficiency.
Network interface card (NIC) in the host is connected to layer 2 (L2) network (Ethernet, WI-Fi, etc.) segments which is further interconnected via switches/bridges to form an L2 network. This L2 network is one subnet in a layer 3 (L3) network (IPv4 or IPv6). There are several L3 networks connected via routers/gateways to form the internet. While, a single data center may have several L2/L3 networks, multiple data centers may be interconnected via L2/L3 switches. Hence, all these network components such as NIC, L2 network, L2 switch, L3 networks, L3 routers, data centers, as well as, the internet significantly needs to be virtualized.
In today’s times, the standard multi-core processors make it possible to design networking devices using software modules that run on standard processors. Hence, by combining several different functional modules, any networking device including L2 switch, L3 router, and application delivery controller, among many others can be created cost-effectively with decent performance.
The global networking industry has shown proliferous growth in SDN, which is expected to make the networks easily virtualizable and partitionable. The IT industry in the current times encompasses all components including, internet service providers, network equipment vendors, cloud service providers, and users who are looking forward to several aspects of SDN.
SDN is expected to reduce both operational expenditure as well as capital expenses for service providers, enterprise data centers, and cloud service providers that implement a variety of switches and routers.
SDN consists of four major innovations such as:
Often the network teams are snowballed with critical configuration requests which could take them days or weeks to provide resolutions. Hence, network automation with network virtualization has become the key to SDN and NFV technologies to increase network agility. Also, ‘The Network Function Virtualization’ (NFV) group of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is constantly setting new and high standards to be agile and capable to respond faster to the needs of the network traffic and services.
At Integration International, Inc., (i3), our NFV solutions can help you meet all your business goals in your timeline. We’ve made it extremely agile for you to adopt NFV in your infrastructure through our open architecture, newer operating models, and comprehensive portfolio of NFV-ready products, services & solutions.