ACG Research White Paper

Hybrid Networks: Integrated Provisioning for Virtual and Physical Networks

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Today, networks are provisioned in two disparate steps: 1) resources are preprovisioned (forecasted and put into service via physical implementation and configuration of the resources and their monitoring for performance and security); 2) when a customer service order is received a service provisioning process is brought into play.

The order is checked and accepted, the resources are allocated to the service order and the service instantiated and monitored. If the required resources are not available, the process is stopped and additional resources are added, delaying the service for the customer.

In the future, virtualized network resources will be able to be dynamically allocated in near-real time.

Customer services will be automatically provisioned and if more network, software, computing or storage resources are needed they will be created and monitored immediately.

These dynamically deployed resource processes will be divided into various network domains with control of the resources in a domain automated via a set of domain orchestration systems. Although the set of domains expected to be useful are not fully fleshed out, it does seem clear that SDN and the mobile core network are two that will be among the first. The former is required for NFV connectivity as well as implementing slicing in the transport network; the latter represents a standard hunk of the network that requires integrated management.

The domain orchestration functions will require both resource and network provisioning capabilities. To provision the network, the domain management system must orchestrate the entire process: instantiating the virtual network functions (VNFs) on their required computing and storage platforms and integrating their inputs and outputs to the other elements. Then they must be configured with…

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