Traffic Engineering for Service-Oriented 5G Networks with SDN-NFV Integration

Network slicing is a promising approach to provisioning service-level virtual network customization, based on the integration of SDN and NFV technologies. Although different network slices are logically independent, they are physically operated over a common infrastructure, resulting in challenges for QoS guarantee among slices in the presence of traffic dynamics. In this article, a TE framework is proposed for efficient resource management among slices, to avoid congestion and prevent the consequent QoS performance degradation. An NFV architecture integrated with two-level SDN controllers located in tenant and infrastructure domains can support the proposed TE framework. A case study is presented to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed TE framework, in terms of QoS performance guarantee, improved resource utilization, and reduced reconfiguration overhead.