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Serverless Literature Guide

Network Function Virtualization

Network function virtualization (NFV) [1] decouples network functionality from its physical embodiment in hardware. In some ways, it is the equivalent of VMs for network equipment. There have been multiple proposals for serverless NFV [2,3], which can be viewed as a logical evolution of NFV. Potential applications for serverless NFV include improved quality of service for 5G networks [4]. Work also suggests that it may be practical to combine serverless NFV and edge FaaS deployments [5].

  • [1]Rashid Mijumbi, Joan Serrat, Juan-Luis Gorricho, Niels Bouten, Filip De Turck, and Raouf Boutaba. 2015. Network Function Virtualization: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 18, 1 (2015), 236–262.
  • [2]Paarijaat Aditya, Istemi Ekin Akkus, Andre Beck, Ruichuan Chen, Volker Hilt, Ivica Rimac, Klaus Satzke, and Manuel Stein. 2019. Will Serverless Computing Revolutionize NFV? Proceedings of the IEEE 107, 4 (2019), 667–678.
  • [3]Arjun Singhvi, Junaid Khalid, Aditya Akella, and Sujata Banerjee. 2020. SNF: Serverless Network Functions. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, 296–310.
  • [4]Saqib Rasool Chaudhry, Andrei Palade, Aqeel Kazmi, and Siobhán Clarke. 2020. Improved QoS at the Edge Using Serverless Computing to Deploy Virtual Network Functions. IEEE Internet of Things Journal 7, 10 (2020), 10673–10683.
  • [5]Lu Zhang, Weiqi Feng, Chao Li, Xiaofeng Hou, Pengyu Wang, Jing Wang, and Minyi Guo. 2021. Tapping Into NFV Environment for Opportunistic Serverless Edge Function Deployment. IEEE Transactions on Computers (2021).