Enhancing 5G SDN/NFV Edge with P4 Data Plane Programmability

The 5G network revolution will be enabled by deep integration of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) to support multi-tenancy, per-user and per-application quality of service and experience. However, full softwarization and current SDN platforms may not be able to sustain the complexity and the heterogeneity of different requirements, for example, strict latency, jitter, high precision traffic and advanced monitoring. For such services, SDN/NFV needs to be boosted not only considering orchestration and control plane, but also data plane programmability. In this article, the potential of the P4 language is illustrated with the aim to show its disruptive novel functionalities at the data plane level currently not available in a SDN/NFV network, opening the way to new orchestration frameworks and enabling a novel autonomic and flexible network at the edge. Use cases, assessments and softwarized performance results are proposed and discussed in the edge and IoT scenario, targeting advanced traffic engineering, cyber security, multi-tenancy, 5G offloading, and telemetry, to demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach.