Episode: 2760
Title: HPR2760: What is VNF
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2760/hpr2760.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 16:26:27

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Good day. My name is JWP. Today I'm going to talk to you about a topic that I saw at the
Open Networking Summit at Amsterdam, Ken Fountain was nice enough to get me a press pass there and so basically what I did was I took my notebook with me and every keynote that somebody said a word that I didn't understand, I wrote down the abbreviation and I'll try to do a podcast about these.
And so last time I talked about OENAP and that's of course something that the Linux Foundation is doing and they were really big on that the edge would have 20 milliseconds.
And so the next thing that they started talking about was something called a VNF which is a virtual network function.
Virtual network functions are virtualized tasks formally carried out by proprietary dedicated hardware. VNFs move individual network functions out of dedicated hardware devices and into software that runs on commodity hardware.
These tasks are used by both network service providers and businesses and they include firewalls, domain system, DNS, caching or network access translation net and can run in virtual machines.
So it's just completely software thing and if on Webopedia it talks about it as a network functions network functions virtualization architecture a virtualized network function or VNF is responsible for handling specific network functions that run in one or more virtual machines on top of hardware networking infrastructure which can include
router switches servers and cloud computing systems and more individual network functions can be changed or combined together in a building block fashion to deliver full scale communication services.
And this is great if your edge hardware provider like where I work we have edge servers and we're going to sell these things.
So networking professionals sometimes use terms virtual network functions or VNF and virtual functions virtualization.
So I have to agree, agree, continue.
Nope, I guess not.
So basically I guess you could get like a docker container and put it in a docker container but from the presentation that they were using,
I sense that it was something even thinner than a docker thing.
Okay, so the last the last thing last definition or last thing.
So again the NFV or VNF sometimes goes by another name in the industry it's called the virtual network function or VNF or
so it either has virtual network function VNF or network functions virtualization in FV.
Both focus primarily on optimization of the networks contrary to software software defined networking which is SDN which separates the control and forwarding plane for centralized view of the network.
Virtual network function is designed to consolidate and deliver networking components necessary to support a full virtualized environment.
However, in a in FV environment the virtual network or VNF takes responsibility for handling specific network functions that run on one or more virtual machines VNF on top of hardware networking infrastructure routers which is individual virtual network functions can be connected or combined together as building blocks to offer full scale networking services.
So the virtual network function VNF background virtual network function came to fruition when service providers attempted to speed up deployment of new network services and trust me China mobile was there and they were talking about all kinds of new services that they wanted to have in California San Francisco Bay area and again they started talking about that they wanted these functions to have a 20 millisecond response time.
So you have to have the servers really really close to the towers and to get this this kind of feedback and and they want to do this of course to advance their revenue and growth plans they soon discovered that hardware based appliances limited their ability to achieve these goals and they look for a standard IT virtualization technologies and found their network function helped accelerate service and provisioning with this several providers.
Several providers banded together and created the European Telecommunications Institute or ETSE the creation of the ETSI resulted in the foundation of network functions basic requirements infrastructure ETSI continues to innovate the network functions with new projects announced in September of 2014 the Linux Foundation announced its open source reference platform.
The open platform for NIF project OP NIF will work closely with ETSE to push constant standards for NFV based EF ends.
And so that's really that's really it. So again it's the reason that the service providers are basically the vote of phones and China mobile and Verizon and things like this of the world orange also presented there is that they want to package services and they want to package these services very close to the edge with a very limited middle second thing.
And they only want these functions to do certain things with your traffic. I can think of maybe something super super fast for location based services or location based advertising or or maybe on the spot area news or area traffic or something like that.
Anyway, you'll have a great day and if you want to reach me please reach out at JWP5 at mental.com.
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