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Welcome to the Packet Pushers Weekly podcast. Today we’re exploring Network Functions Virtualization or NFV. As the name suggests, NFV takes networking functions (for example, firewalling or load balancing) that used to be tied to a hardware platform and turns them into virtual instances that are disaggregated from the underlying hardware.
NFV introduces new ways to deploy networking services in the data center and for carriers and service providers. In this episode we’ll get our arms around the concept of NFV, business drivers and use cases, how it differs from SDN, and the technologies that enable it.
Our guest is Jeff Doyle, a consultant, CCIE 1919, and the author of a variety of networking books, including the textbooks Routing TCP/IP Volumes I and II.
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Show Links:
NVF Resources
ETSI MANO Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV); Management and Orchestration (PDF)
IETF RFC7426: Software-Defined Networking (SDN): Layers and Architecture Terminology
IETF RFC7665: Service Function Chaining (SFC) Architecture
AT&T ECOMP Transitioning to Linux Foundation
Books
Routing TCP/IP, Volume 1, 2nd Edition
Routing TCP/IP, Volume II: CCIE Professional Development, 2nd Edition
Pearson Education – OSPF and IS-IS
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Man, I know the virtualization thing is here…I’m trying to jump onboard…I’m purchasing videos and starting to listen to podcasts like yours…any other references I can go to in order to become more educated technically as well as market-wise?
Thanks,
KJ
Download and experiment. If you are just starting out – go with virtualBox or VMM if you have access to Linux. (and btw…get access to Linux). Bring up a VM or two. Then try packstack to get a small OpenStack deployment on your laptop, and again, spin up a few simple VMs and get them talking to each other.
Finally, get experience with containers. Much of this is likely moving in that direction, so docker, kubernetes, etc. Again, so much of this is available as open source and you can go a long way in learning with that, or even joining an open source community to get beyond learning and contribute.
Please share any training videos on NFV or SDN to understand the concepts in more detail. I have read the article on NFV it actually made me think that once this will be implemented/ adopted across the world this will revolunarize the way networks being handled by the managed network services companies.
Here at AT&T we are using NFV, SD-WAN, & SDN extensively, along with Flexware which allows our customers to deploy what they need at a given site, (router, switch, firewall, gumball machine) on a single platform. NFV is here to stay and will revoltionize how we design and manage networks.