An NFV Orchestration Framework for Interference-Free Policy Enforcement

Network functions virtualization is a new paradigm to offer flexibility of software network function processing on demand. Policy enforcement satisfies network function policies that requires flows to traverse through given sequences of network functions. We summarize three desired properties of virtual network function placement, namely policy enforcement, interference freedom, and resource isolation. However, none of existing solutions can satisfy all of them. In this paper, we present a novel SDN-based NFV orchestration framework, called APPLE, to enforce network function policies while providing the above properties. We present detailed design considerations and prototype implementation. We conduct experiments using representative network topologies, traffic matrices, and policy chains. The results from both prototype experiments and simulations show that APPLE is resource efficient and can quickly react to traffic changes.