The ongoing network softwarization trend holds the promise to revolutionize network infrastructures by making them more flexible, reconfigurable, portable, and more adaptive than ever. Still, the migration from hard-coded/hardwired network functions towards their software-programmable counterparts comes along with the need for tailored optimizations and acceleration techniques, so as to avoid, or at least mitigate, the throughput/latency performance degradation with respect to fixed function network elements. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, we provide a comprehensive overview of the host-based Network Function Virtualization (NFV) ecosystem, covering a broad range of techniques, from low level hardware acceleration and bump-in-the-wire offloading approaches, to highlevel software acceleration solutions, including the virtualization technique itself. Second, we derive guidelines regarding the design, development, and operation of NFV-based deployments that meet the flexibility and scalability requirements of modern communication networks.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.