A Critical View of the NFV Dataplane Implementations for 5G Networks

In this paper we offer a critical view of the current NFV approach and the challenges that the system integrators will face when implementing 5th generation network platforms. The NFV concept is essentially applying the cloud ideas to the networking and telecommunication domains. Its promise is to provide a flexible and programmable infrastructure, which can host a variety of services, avoiding single vendor lock-in. This is achieved by moving the core functionality from the dedicated hardware (packet processors, DSPs etc.) to a virtualized environment running on top of generic purpose CPU cores.