Network function virtualization (NFV) has drawn significant attention from both industry and academia as an important shift in telecommunication service provisioning. By decoupling network functions (NFs) from the physical devices on which they run, NFV has the potential to lead to significant reductions in operating expenses (OPEX) and capital expenses (CAPEX) and facilitate the deployment of new services with increased agility and faster time-to-value. The NFV paradigm is still in its infancy and there is a large spectrum of opportunities for the research community to develop new architectures, systems and applications, and to evaluate alternatives and trade-offs in developing technologies for its successful deployment. In this paper, after discussing NFV and its relationship with complementary fields of software defined networking (SDN) and cloud computing, we survey the state-of-the-art in NFV, and identify promising research directions in this area. We also overview key NFV projects, standardization efforts, early implementations, use cases, and commercial products.

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Network Function Virtualization: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges

To support bursty traffic on the Internet (and especially WWW) efficiently, optical burst switching (OBS) is proposed as a way to streamline both protocols and hardware in building the future gener...

Optical burst switching (OBS) - a new paradigm for an optical Internet

This work presents an estimation of the global electricity usage that can be ascribed to Communication Technology (CT) between 2010 and 2030. The scope is three scenarios for use and production of consumer devices, communication networks and data centers. Three different scenarios, best, expected, and worst, are set up, which include annual numbers of sold devices, data traffic and electricity intensities/efficiencies. The most significant trend, regardless of scenario, is that the proportion of use-stage electricity by consumer devices will decrease and will be transferred to the networks and data centers. Still, it seems like wireless access networks will not be the main driver for electricity use. The analysis shows that for the worst-case scenario, CT could use as much as 51% of global electricity in 2030. This will happen if not enough improvement in electricity efficiency of wireless access networks and fixed access networks/data centers is possible. However, until 2030, globally-generated renewable electricity is likely to exceed the electricity demand of all networks and data centers. Nevertheless, the present investigation suggests, for the worst-case scenario, that CT electricity usage could contribute up to 23% of the globally released greenhouse gas emissions in 2030.

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On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, was first delivered to congress in 1996 and consisted of just two Titles. It was designed to protect health insurance coverage for workers and their families while between jobs. It establishes standards for electronic health care transactions and addresses the issues of privacy and security when dealing with Protected Health Information (PHI). HIPAA is applicable only in the United States of America.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technology that has been widely adopted in many new and emerging broadband wireless and wireline communication systems. Due to its capability to transmit a high-speed data stream using multiple spectral-overlapped lower-speed subcarriers, OFDM technology offers superior advantages of high spectrum efficiency, robustness against inter-carrier and inter-symbol interference, adaptability to server channel conditions, etc. In recent years, there have been intensive studies on optical OFDM (O-OFDM) transmission technologies, and it is considered a promising technology for future ultra-high-speed optical transmission. Based on O-OFDM technology, a novel elastic optical network architecture with immense flexibility and scalability in spectrum allocation and data rate accommodation could be built to support diverse services and the rapid growth of Internet traffic in the future. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on OFDM-based elastic optical network technologies, including basic principles of OFDM, O-OFDM technologies, the architectures of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks, and related key enabling technologies. The main advantages and issues of OFDM-based elastic core optical networks that are under research are also discussed.

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A Survey on OFDM-Based Elastic Core Optical Networking

Recently, a lot of effort has been put into research and development of energy-efficient devices and systems and into optimization of the network infrastructure with regard to energy consumption. On the one hand, reducing total power consumption of global communication networks has become an imperative and an important step towards the future highly energy-efficient Internet. On the other hand, capacity and performance of the Internet must be continuously improved in order to meet the high requirements set by the continuously increasing of both the number of broadband subscribers and the amount of user traffic. Thus, only a highly energy-efficient and high-performance network infrastructure designed to efficiently support advanced applications and services for improving energy productivity in many other branches of business and society can significantly contribute to global energy savings. This paper briefly discusses potentials and options for achieving such an energy-efficient network infrastructure. Some examples of software applications and services for global energy savings are briefly reviewed. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the need for a holistic approach to evaluate energy efficiency and to improve the global energy productivity through the use of high-performance and energy-efficient networks, services and applications.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11235-013-9726-x.pdf

Energy-efficient communication networks for improved global energy productivity

Currently, optical communication systems and networks undergo a radical change from traditional static architectures to more dynamic, flexible, adaptive and energy efficient concepts. In this paper, we briefly review emerging technologies and approaches for future optical networks that will be able to meet the high requirements of current and emerging applications. Such high-capacity, ubiquitous, flexible and energy efficient optical networks are referred here to as fifth-generation (5G) optical transport networks.

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Towards fifth-generation (5G) optical transport networks

We estimate power consumption of several advanced PON technologies and architectures w/o and w/ reach extenders. Our results show that hybrid TDM/WDM PON has the potential to provide the highest energy efficiency.

Power efficiency of extended reach 10G-EPON and TDM/WDM PON

This paper describes recent research activities and results in the area of photonic switching carried out within the framework of the EU-funded e-Photon/ONe+ network of excellence, Virtual Department on Optical Switching. Technology aspects of photonics in switching and, in particular, recent advances in wavelength conversion, ring resonators, and packet switching and processing subsystems are presented as the building blocks for the implementation of a high-performance router for the next-generation Internet.

Photonics in switching: enabling technologies and subsystem design

In the future, the Internet may ultimately be constrained by energy consumption and the capability to provide quality of service (QoS). As regards the Internet core, hybrid optical switching (HOS) is promising to provide service differentiation and reduced energy consumption in respect to current electronic switching solutions. In this paper we present a novel hybrid HOS network architecture that efficiently integrates the optical packet, burst, and circuit switching on the same network. The proposed HOS network envisages the use of two parallel switches, a slow optical switch for the transmission of circuits and long bursts, and a fast switch for the transmission of packets and short bursts. The most appropriate switching method is selected for the traffic generated by different applications and the less power consuming elements are utilized for transmission, ensuring flexibility, QoS differentiation, and low energy consumption. The HOS network is organized in an overlay model with the HOS control layer performing routing, signaling, and link management, and with the HOS forwarding layer managing the reservation of resources and data scheduling. Performance and energy efficiencyof the analyzed network are assessedby means of a combined analytical and simulation approach.

Slavisa Aleksic

Papers

Energy-efficient communication networks for improved global energy productivity

Towards fifth-generation (5G) optical transport networks

Power efficiency of extended reach 10G-EPON and TDM/WDM PON

Photonics in switching: enabling technologies and subsystem design

Hybrid optical switching for energy-efficiency and QoS differentiation in core networks