NetOr: A Microservice Oriented Inter-Domain Vertical Service Orchestrator for 5G Networks

Abstract

Most modern 5G Vertical Service Orchestrators present various limitations. Among these, one may high-light (i) the employment of monolithic architectures, (ii) the lack of standardized APIs and methodologies, (iii) the minimum support for inter-domain scenarios, and (iv) the impossibility of performing run-time operations over Vertical Services. To achieve a fully-fledged Vertical Service Orchestrator, these problems must be solved. This is the focus of the work presented in this article. Our work presents a new 5G Vertical Service orchestration system named NetOr, which tackles all the listed limitations and can support complex and intricate use cases. NetOr was implemented according to a microservice architecture. Thus, it has increased flexibility, scalability, and maintainability. Moreover, NetOr inherited most advantages of the modern Vertical Service Orchestrators and, therefore, can be considered an improvement of said orchestrators. Furthermore, this work also presents a Proof-of-Concept solution to achieve inter-domain communication through the orchestration of an End-To-End Network Slice that establishes several VPN tunnels between the domains encompassed by the Network Slice.