NOn: Network Function Virtualization Ontology towards Semantic Service Implementation

A hazard of ongoing Network Function Virtualization (NFV) realizations is the lack of a common understanding in support of development, deployment and operation tasks related to Virtual Function Networks (VNFs), NFV components and interfaces. In the current state of affairs, NFV stake-holders commonly create their own terminology to define and describe NFV components, following going the specifications led by European Telecommunications Standard Institute but also adopting telecommunication-and software-centric definitions. As a consequence, portability and interoperability goals of NFV get compromised since NFV technology providers have hard times in understanding and using definitions and descriptions across different domains. Furthermore, VNF data models of operational systems and deployment configuration software need to be re-defined, re-coded, and re-compiled to make them work over different NFV platforms. In this work, we present the design and implementation of our proposed NFV Ontology (NOn) enabling Semantic nFV Services (SnS) to reduce manual intervention during the integration process of heterogeneous NFV domains and effectively overcome the costly re-work hazards of current NFV implementation approaches. We present the proof of concept implementation of a Generic Client leveraging SnS/NOn to create and consume dynamic workflows in an open source testbed based on OpenStack and OpenBaton.