NFV Challenges Abound, a Leaning Beckons

NFV was introduced as a concept more than six years ago, but the wireless telecommunications industry is caught in a “paradox” that is precluding it from reaching a critical mass, said Scott Shenker, professor of computer science at U.C. Berkeley, in a keynote at this week’s Open Networking Summit. “We have to admit that we have a very serious problem. The rate of adoption and innovation is much slower than anybody thought six years ago,” he said. The problem boils down to integration, or rather a lack thereof, Shenker explained. Because the three components of NFV virtualized network functions (VNFs), NFV management and orchestration, and NFV infrastructure (NFVI) are so tightly combined, it has created a paradox that makes it unnecessarily complex and difficult for operators to implement the concept at scale.