What is Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)?

As the telecom industry quickly develops, mobile operators are progressively investing in scalable and adaptable next-generation network infrastructures to cater to future business needs. In order to develop into new business sectors, operators must offer services beyond voice and data. They must adopt new markets and services, such as corporate cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Business Intelligence, in order to generate new revenue-generating possibilities. Their IT systems must be transformed from internal support systems to business-enabling systems.

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is among the most promising virtualization trends. For a long time, businesses' capabilities have been constrained by the infrastructure they possess. The use of NFV assists enterprises in overcoming these restrictions. Virtualization is used by several businesses to lower the expenses involved with maintaining and powering physical infrastructure.

NFV stands out as a concept that offers a more adaptable, cost-effective, and efficient network architecture. As one of the 5G infrastructure pillars, network function virtualization is crucial to the transformation goals of the majority of communication service providers. Currently, operators are actively integrating NFV technology and automation in their networks, and vendors are offering an expanding variety of NFV-compliant products and services. While NFV provides obvious advantages, it is not a panacea. The user's hardware issues are reduced, but they are replaced with the difficulties of administering Network Functions Virtualization. There is increased demand to control network traffic to ensure that the network works optimally and remains secure against external attacks.

In this article, we will cover the following topics:

• What does NFV Mean?
• What is the Importance of NFV?
• What is the Benefit of Network Function Virtualization?
• What are the Disadvantages of NFV?
• How does NFV Work?
• What is NFV Architecture?
  • What are the Core Elements of MANO?
  • What are the types of NFV Data Traffic Patterns?
• What are the Use Cases for NFV?
• History of NFV
• What is the Difference between NFV and SDN?
• How can NFV facilitate the development of 5G?

What does NFV Mean?

Network functions virtualization (NFV) is a network architectural concept that virtualizes network services that have traditionally been operated on network appliance hardware, such as firewalls, routers, and load balancers. These services are packaged as virtual machines (VMs) on commodity hardware, enabling service providers to operate their networks on common data center servers rather than proprietary ones.

NFV eliminates the requirement for specialized hardware for each network function. NFV enhances scalability and agility by enabling service providers to deploy new network services and applications on demand without the need for extra hardware resources. Therefore, NFV is one of the key components of a telco cloud, which is transforming the telecommunication sector.

NFV employs server virtualization techniques similar to those used in business IT, but it is distinct. For a virtualized network function (VNF), customized hardware appliances for each network function are unnecessary. A VNF may instead consist of one or more virtual machines (VMs) installing independent processes and software on top of switches and storage devices, conventional high-volume servers, or cloud computing infrastructure.

Virtualized firewalls, load balancers, session border controllers, WAN accelerators, and intrusion detection devices are examples of network function virtualization. Administrators may use any of these to supply network services or safeguard a network without the complexity and expense of purchasing and deploying physical equipment.

NFV is suitable for a wide variety of network functions, including mobile networks. Common network function virtualization applications are listed below:

• Security features, such as intrusion detection and prevention systems, firewalls, and Network Address Translation

• Web Application Firewalls

• Load balancers

• SD-WAN and software-defined branches

• Content delivery networks (CDN), which include content delivery services such as video streaming, are examples of content delivery networks.

• IP multimedia subsystem (IMS)

• Session border control (SBC)

• Evolved packet core (EPC)

• Virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE)

• Network monitoring

• Network slicing

What is the Importance of NFV?

Network Functions Virtualization plays a crucial role in the trend toward abstracting physical resources. NFV is important because it permits the separation of communication services from specialized hardware, including routers and firewalls. This separation allows network operations to deploy new services without installing new hardware and in a dynamic manner. Unlike conventional networking, network services virtualization expedites the deployment of network components from months to hours. In addition, virtualized services may operate on less costly, generic servers as opposed to pricey, proprietary hardware.

Additional justifications for using network function virtualization are as follows:

• Scalability: Scaling the network architecture using virtual machines is quicker, simpler, and requires no extra hardware. Network Functions Virtualization offers significant benefits for disaster recovery. If a natural catastrophe or system failure impacts your network's physical equipment, there is no way to avoid the impact. However, a virtual device may be relocated to another location or data center so that regular functions can be resumed much more quickly.

• Less Hardware: Because NFV operates on virtual computers rather than real machines, less equipment is required and operating expenses are reduced.

• Cost: Pay-as-you-go NFV models may minimize expenses since organizations only pay for what they need.

What is the Benefit of Network Function Virtualization?

Numerous service providers believe that the advantages of network function virtualization exceed the potential concerns. The main advantages of network functions virtualization are as follows:

• Management: Traditional hardware-based networks need network administrators to acquire and manually configure and connect specific hardware devices. This is a time-consuming process that demands specialist networking knowledge. NFV enables the execution of virtual network functions on a typical generic server managed by a hypervisor, which is far less costly than acquiring custom hardware devices. With a virtualized network, network setup and administration are simplified significantly.

• Cost Savings: NFV enables service providers to operate network operations on regular hardware as opposed to specialized gear. In addition, since network services are virtualized, a single server may execute many functions. This implies that less physical hardware is required, allowing for resource consolidation that results in space, energy, and cost savings. In this sense, NFV lowers operating and capital expenses, resulting in a quicker return on investment (ROI) for edge computing data center rollouts.

• Flexibility: Best of all, network functionality may be modified or added on demand since the network operates on easily supplied and controlled virtual machines. NFV provides providers with the option to operate VNFs across several servers or relocate them when demand fluctuates. This adaptability allows service providers to expedite the delivery of services and applications. For instance, if a client wants a new network function, a new VM may be spun up to accommodate the request. If the function is no longer required, the virtual machine (VM) may be decommissioned. This is also a low-risk method for evaluating the worth of a proposed new service.

• Reduced Vendor Exclusivity: COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) hardware is all that businesses need to operate VNFs, allowing them to avoid vendor lock-in and costly, difficult-to-deploy proprietary gear that is prone to obsolescence. NFV enables conventional hardware to perform network operations in place of specialized hardware.

What are the Disadvantages of NFV?

NFV improves the responsiveness, flexibility, and scalability of a network. It speeds up the time to market and cuts equipment costs dramatically. However, security hazards exist, and network functions virtualization security concerns have proved to be an impediment to widespread adoption among telecom companies. Consider the following risks associated with deploying network functions virtualization:

• NFV Standards: NFV adoption is hampered in part by the number of standards and open-source initiatives that are being done to encourage NFV development. ETSI, Open Platform for NFV, Open Source MANO, Open Network Automation Platform, and MEF (originally the Metro Ethernet Forum) are examples of organizations on this list. With so many competing techniques - all supported by different service providers and operators - it is difficult to settle on one that provides acceptable capabilities for the whole sector. Consequently, service providers were unwilling to engage in NFV architectures until a clear architectural direction was established.

• Complex layers and difficult protection: The complexity of NFV systems exceeds that of conventional networking settings. In order to protect the network's integrity, administrators must be able to navigate these obstacles. Therefore, the administrator must safeguard the physical layer, the virtualized layer, and the carrier application. Multiple layers that are difficult to safeguard with blanket security measures make NFV setups inherently complicated.

• Ineffective physical security controls: Compared to the physical equipment that is secured in a data center, network components that are virtualized are more susceptible to new types of cyber attacks.

• Reduced network traffic transparency: Traditional network traffic monitoring tools have difficulty detecting potentially malicious abnormalities in east-west network traffic between virtual machines, hence NFV needs more granular security solutions. This is a significant issue since it makes it harder for administrators to identify performance problems and cyber attacks.

• Difficult malware isolation and control : It is simpler for malware to spread across virtual components operating on the same virtual system than between hardware components that are physically separated or isolated.

• Performance Limitations: When transitioning to a virtualized infrastructure, physical resource issues are exchanged for virtual resource concerns. You are no longer responsible for powering physical devices, but you must now monitor performance bottlenecks. Network Functions Virtualization is susceptible to experiencing poor performance. While the performance of Network Functions Virtualization improves with time, it must still be properly controlled. For instance, the virtual switch, or vSwitch, is the location where packets travel between virtual machines and network services. The vSwitch is a bottleneck that is impacted by the kind of network traffic being transported. Streams of audio and video might be very demanding in terms of performance needs.

How does NFV Work?

Utilizing virtualized networking components, network function virtualization provides a hardware-independent architecture. The network function virtualization architecture relies on server virtualization technologies to allow the necessary virtual machine for hosting network activities.

Virtualization enables organizations to distribute resources on-demand to accommodate the demands of dynamic and evolving workloads, all while taking advantage of the cost savings associated with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware.

Computing, storage, and network resources are virtualized and deployed on COTS hardware such as x86 servers. Software, as opposed to hardware, manages load balancing, routing, and firewall protection. A hypervisor allows network engineers to program all of the virtual network's components and automate network implementation. Through a single point of management, IT administrators may modify several elements of network operations within minutes.

Since virtualized resources are accessible, parts of the x86 server's available resources are allocated to VMs. Consequently, several VMs function on a single server and scale to use the remaining available resources. This also suggests that resources are less likely to be idle and that data centers with virtualized design use their resources more effectively. The data plane and control plane function both inside the data center and on external networks.

What is NFV Architecture?

Individual proprietary hardware components such as gateways, load balancers, firewalls, routers, switches, and intrusion detection systems perform various networking duties in a conventional network design. A virtualized network replaces conventional networking devices with software programs that operate on virtual computers. The NFV architecture provided by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) contributes to NFV implementation standardization. To encourage greater stability and interoperability, each component of the design is based on these standards. An NFV architecture has three components:

• Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVi): NFV infrastructure (NFVi) refers to the collection of software and hardware components that comprise the deployment environment for NFV. The NFV infrastructure may cover many locations. The networking equipment that connects these sites is included in the NFVi. The infrastructure components of NFVi include computation, storage, and networking. An NFV architecture may be founded on a container management platform or a hypervisor, like KVM, that isolates computation, storage, and network resources required to run apps. The NFV infrastructure manager (VIM) oversees the resource allocation for VNFs. OpenStack is an open-source virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) that manages both physical and virtual resources.

• Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs): Software applications replace the hardware components of a conventional network design in order to provide many forms of network functionality (virtualized network functions), such as WAN optimization, firewalling, and load balancing. VNFs are often launched as VMs using hypervisors on COTS hardware. A cloud-native network function (CNF) is a virtual network function (VNF) created for the cloud environment. CNF, unlike VMs, operates in containers and is a VNF for the cloud environment's future development.

• MANO Framework: To administer the infrastructure and provide network functionality, a framework (commonly referred to as MANO - Management, Automation, and Network Orchestration) is required. The VNFs in the NFV architecture is administered and orchestrated by NFV MANO. MANO generates network services by automating, providing, and coordinating activities for VIM and VNF managers, developing VNFs, and overlaying networking service chains. NFV MANO is responsible for the following responsibilities:

  • Orchestrating virtual network functions into network services (NS)
  • Utilizing virtualized resources to deploy and execute VNF and NS instances
  • Engaging with operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS) can deliver advantages such as rapid service innovation, flexible network function deployment, improved resource usage, and cheaper CapEx and OpEx costs.
  • Controlling the logical function and ensuring VNF service levels including fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security (FCAPS) by interacting with element management (EM)
  • Lifecycle management of VNF and NS objects
  • Interact with NFVI in order to assign, manage, and coordinate virtualized resources.

This design allows service providers to build a private cloud and leverage a single hardware resource pool for all network tasks. All of this is made possible by the use of a virtualization layer and managed by NFV Management and Orchestration, which allows providers to automate the provisioning, deployment, and management of a network service on top of a virtual infrastructure. Deploying end-to-end network services in such an environment conceals the complexity of the underlying infrastructure, facilitates the deployment of virtual network functions (VNFs), and simplifies the extension of all resources.

What are the Core Elements of MANO?

The management and orchestration of cloud infrastructure are crucial. NFV Management and Orchestration is responsible for managing both the cloud infrastructure and network operations simultaneously, allowing service providers to utilize their resources efficiently while providing the highest quality service. Below, we will explore the three MANO components: the VIM, the VNF Manager, and the NFV Orchestrator.

• VIM (Virtual Infrastructure Manager): The VIM is accountable for managing the physical and virtual resources of cloud infrastructure, as well as coordinating and optimizing the allocation, growth, and release of NFVI resources utilizing a precise inventory system. In addition to serving as a repository for NFVI hardware resources (such as computing, storage, and networking) and software resources (such as hypervisor), the VIM manager coordinates all physical resources required to offer the right network function. Notifying users of performance and fault conditions is another function of the VIM. The hypervisor is the link between the hardware and software in any cloud system. OpenStack is the most widely utilized hypervisor in the telecom industry since it is seen as the answer for multi-vendor settings that makes API-based multi-vendor provisioning of an underlying infrastructure simpler. Thus, companies, like Red Hat, Mirantis, Huawei, etc., developed their own OpenStack implementations.

• VNF Manager: The VNF manager is an essential component of virtual infrastructure management since it must standardize virtual network functions and facilitate interoperability between software-defined components. The VNF Manager is responsible for the lifecycle management of virtual network functions, which includes instantiation and termination of network functions, scaling of network functions, software upgrades of VNFs, the configuration of various complexities, and receipt of performance measurements and alarms at the VNF level. Scaling network functions may involve scaling in/out (raising and reducing the number of VNFs) and scaling up/down (increasing or lowering the number of resources, such as RAM or vCPU) based on the requirements. The VNF Manager may be built for the same VNFs, other VNFs, a single VNF instance, or many VNF instances, as well as for more complicated VNFs such as vIMS or vEPC.

• NFV Orchestrator: The NFV Orchestrator serves two primary functions: network service lifecycle management and orchestration of NVFIs across various VIMs. It enables providers and operators to govern the administration of network services through onboarding and VNF packages, as well as the instantiation and scaling of network services, hence establishing an end-to-end service. Additionally, the NFV Orchestrator handles the topology of network services and the rules that may be implemented at the network service and VNF level. It handles NFVI resources, including distribution, reservation, and allocation to a network service or VNF instance, through VIM connections to the NFVI. In this approach, the NFV Orchestrator has global control over resources across VIM instances, and depending on resource use and other rules, it may optimize the use of these resources to apply distinct policy management for network services and VNFs.

What are the Types of NFV Data Traffic Patterns?

Understanding the function and traffic patterns of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) is crucial for selecting the appropriate technology for switching traffic between VNFs and the outside world. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solutions use two distinct patterns for data traffic: east-west and north-south.

• East-West: The traffic reaches the hosting server over a physical NIC (pNIC) and is passed to a virtual network function (VNF). The traffic from the VNF then is forwarded to another service-chained VNF, which could be service chained to other VNFs. The pNIC will then pass the communication to the physical cable.

• North-South: The data traffic reaches the hosting server via a pNIC and is then sent to a VNF. The data is then sent through the pNIC from the VNF to the physical wire.

• Combination: Both patterns are used together. The VNF employs the North-South data traffic pattern for user data and the East-West data traffic pattern to transfer traffic to a VNF used only for statistics collecting, logging, or storage.

What are the Use Cases for NFV?

Network function virtualization has risen in popularity as a solution to a variety of networking issues for businesses in a variety of industries and markets. With the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the rising demand for more complex services, NFV allows businesses to develop, deploy, and simplify much more advanced services and operations while cutting costs via cost savings. Here are a few examples of how NFV is used to overcome different challenges and offer better outcomes in order to enhance services and save expenses.

• Mobile edge computing: Mobile edge computing is an additional well-liked technological development. Utilizing NFV, edge devices execute computational services and deliver network operations by creating and deploying a single or more VMs. One of these technologies is multi-access edge computing (MEC). Mobile edge computing is used to achieve ultra-low latency. In this context, edge computing refers to radio towers, mini-data, and local data centers. NFV translates some of these mobile network service operations from hardware to software.This technology was developed by the growth of 5G networks. In its design, the MEC employs discrete components equivalent to the NFV infrastructure.

• Network virtualization: Globally, NFV solutions for network virtualization are predominantly used by telecom companies. Network virtualization constructs a virtual network on top of the physical network, enabling service providers to expand and accelerate the creation of new services. Additionally, it improves essential network needs such as provisioning. Customers are turning to network virtualization to remove network activities such as DNS, caching, routing, and firewalling from the formerly dominant proprietary hardware and to improve their network services. This technology enables them to operate on software rather than hardware. Network virtualization gives suppliers the agility and flexibility necessary for deploying new network services. It lets companies save money on expensive, unwieldy physical technology and the expenses associated with running, maintaining, and sometimes repairing it.

• Video analytics: Video analytics systems and software are another technological industry whose potential has significantly increased with the introduction of the Internet of Things. Businesses now gather large amounts of data from their factories, retail, and farms using IoT and smart devices. End-to-end network latency is one of the major issues of contemporary networking, offering a significant barrier to applications and network services such as video analytics that are subject to network delays. NFV and SDN frameworks are used by businesses to solve this problem, minimize network resource usage, and enhance latency. With IoT and edge devices enabling the creation, collection, and analysis of a growing amount of data, video analytics software solutions are becoming more crucial for harnessing big data.

• Security: The methods we use to safeguard our physical and virtual tools have developed over the last decade as a result of technological advancements. Numerous security firms now provide virtual firewalls to safeguard virtual machines. However, firewalls are merely one of almost all security devices and components that NFV and SDN will virtualize in the end. One of the major benefits of virtualized security is the notion of centrally controlled procedures and uniformly dispersed enforcement. Various two advantages alone have prompted businesses to increase security and examine these security solutions.

• Service Chaining: Communication Service Providers (CSP) may connect and chain services or applications, such as firewalls and SD-WAN network optimization, and provide them as a service for on-demand delivery.

• IoT Virtualization: IoT applications consist of a vast array of service types, include several parties, and cover a broad range of needs. The deployment of IoT-related functions across NFV domains, perhaps in conjunction with public/private clouds, is necessary for the effective delivery of services. Efficient exploitation of IoT services and rapid deployment of new IoT-based services are benefits of virtualized IoT.

• Orchestration Engines: Orchestration engines are among the most advantageous use cases for NFV. Issues such as poor agility, human error, and the absence of automated procedures and alarms severely constrained the capabilities of old legacy networks. Human mistake is one of the leading reasons for network downtime. This explains why automated methods are so popular. These technologies help reduce the expenses associated with maintenance and upkeep since they need far less human interaction. The NFVi and VNFs are managed by orchestration. Centralized orchestration engines are a very valuable investment for those who are prepared to get started; nonetheless, while evaluating a centralized automation engine, the following characteristics are commonly considered as essential:

  • Centralized Management of hybrid WANs
  • Centralized policy automation
  • Management of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates
  • Segmentation and network-wide visibility
  • Compatible from day zero

• Network Slicing: Since the start of 5G design and deployment, network slicing has acquired considerable appeal. The objective of this technique is to divide a physical network into several networks. NFV and Network slicing are closely connected concepts, and it is probable that NFV will play an important role in this slicing, particularly for 5G. Slicing the network is analogous to the creation of advanced Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and it may include both physical and virtual instances. This method generates many logical network instances inside a single physical network. Each instance or "slice" may be optimized for certain purposes and assigned to specific departments. Typically, the slice is delivered as a VNF. The succeeding generic 5G Network Slicing paradigm suggested in the IEEE journal "Network Slicing in 5G: Survey and Challenges" is built on three layers: service, network function, and infrastructure. The service layer (operator) pushes VNFs to the function layer, which operates on generic on-premises hardware. The Orchestrator is responsible for slicing these three layers. Since each network slice may be referred to as a network function, NFV will automatically provide the appropriate QoS and performance resources to each network slice.

History of NFV

In October 2012, a consortium of telecom operators presented a white paper on software-defined networking (SDN) and OpenFlow at a conference in Darmstadt, Germany. The Call for Action that concluded the White Paper resulted in the formation of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute's (ETSI) Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Industry Specification Group (ISG). The ISG consisted of members from the European and international telecommunications industries. Recently, more than 130 of the world's largest network operators formed an ESTI Industry Specification Group (ISG) for NFV. ETSI ISG NFV covers several facets, such as functional architecture, information model, data model, protocols, APIs, testing, dependability, security, and future evolutions, among others.

Since May 2021, the ETSI ISG NFV has issued Release 5 of its standards, which aims to generate new specifications and expand the already-published specifications based on new features and improvements.

Since the publishing of the white paper, the group has generated over one hundred publications that have garnered industry-wide recognition and are being integrated with notable open-source projects like OpenStack, ONAP, and Open Source MANO (OSM), to mention a few. Due to strong cross-liaison operations, the ETSI NFV standards are cited by organizations like 3GPP, IETF, ETSI MEC, etc. Several open-source initiatives, including ETSI, Open Platform for NFV, and MEF (previously the Metro Ethernet Forum), are currently creating NFV standards. The presence of so many distinct groups with conflicting proposals for standards has made it difficult for service providers to adopt network functions virtualization. Nevertheless, its popularity is rising due to the rapidly developing complexity and needs of corporate networks today.

What is the Difference between NFV and SDN?

Software Defined Networking, or SDN, and NFV are complimentary, yet increasingly reliant on one another. Both use virtualization and network abstraction, but their separation of functions and abstraction of resources vary.

While the SDN enables dynamic network control and the supply of networks as a service, the NFV enables the management and orchestration of the virtualization of resources for the delivery of network functions and their composition into higher-layer network services.

SDN separates the network control operations such as routing, policy formulation, and applications from the network forwarding functions, whereas NFV separates networking services from specialized hardware appliances. With SDN, a virtual network control plane selects where to transmit traffic, making it possible to design whole networks via a single pane of glass. SDN enables the automation of network control functions, which enables the network to respond rapidly to dynamic workloads. A software-defined network may run on top of either a virtual or physical network, although a virtual network does not need SDN to function. NFV facilitates SDN by providing the infrastructure on which SDN applications may operate. NFV provides fundamental networking functions, while SDN regulates and orchestrates them for specific applications. NFV comprises OSI Layers 4 through 7 and enables the optimization of deployment of network operations such as edge authentication, load balancers, and WAN controllers. However. SDN is responsible for OSI Layers 2-3 functions and optimizes network infrastructure, including Ethernet switches, routers, and wireless access points. Additionally, SDN defines and modifies configuration and behavior programmatically.

NFV and SDN may be combined depending on the desired outcome, and both use commodity hardware. With NFV and SDN, service providers construct a more flexible, programmable, and resource-efficient network architecture.

	SDN	NFV
Management	Monitor throughput, routing, and policy definitions using a centralized control console.	Virtual network functions are managed and monitored centrally, regardless of their location on the network.
Costs	The automation of network setup, additions, and modifications generate the greatest cost savings by reducing operating costs. Personnel expenses account for the majority of total expenditures, hence a slight decrease in operating costs might result in a substantial cost-benefit ratio.	VNFs, which operate on high-performance servers in data centers, reduce the need to acquire specialized network gear for each network function. This permits the deployment of less area, electricity, cooling, and equipment.
Deployment	Hypervisors, network controllers, load balancers, and gateways are installed and configured on virtual machines to provide the necessary network infrastructure controls.	On top of virtualized infrastructure, a variety of virtualized network functions, such as routers, firewalls, and SD-WAN, are deployed as software.
Flexibility	Adjust network-wide traffic flow without difficulty in anticipation of or in reaction to changing business requirements.	Programmable interfaces allow for the provisioning of new network devices and the reconfiguration of existing network devices using scripting and/or management consoles.
Scope	Defines the big-picture aspects of the entire network - the type of infrastructure, services and applications available. Determines network policies that guide the delivery and use of network resources. Hypervisor orchestrates and controls lower-level network functions.	Under the direction of a hypervisor, provide a variety of specialized tasks that must be performed at all levels and stages of a network - the periphery, border, and core.
Standards	Open Network Foundation aims to produce "a variety of open and vendor-neutral standards for the communications interface between the control and forwarding layers of an SDN architecture."	The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) establishes and maintains "globally applicable standards for information and telecommunications technologies pertaining to NFV."

Table 1. SDN vs NFV

How can NFV facilitate the development of 5G?

5G is the fifth-generation mobile network, and it was built and executed with NFV and cloud concepts in mind. From the 5G Core to the 5G RAN, NFV increases automation, and operational agility, and reduces CapEx throughout the whole 5G infrastructure.

Network slicing that is supported by NFV is a key component of 5G core networks. Network slicing is critical for using the 5G capabilities. It divides a single physical network into a number of virtual networks that use the same network architecture. This logical division divides networks into configurable slices, allowing operators to provide services tailored to the demands of each individual consumer. Beyond customization, network slicing enables operators to guarantee consumers' quality of service (QoS). Adequate QoS helps network operators to enhance network performance by decreasing latency and enhancing security, among other means.