Distinguish between NFV and SDN: Next generation networks - Part III

If you refer to our previous articles that have been published in our blog, you can find out the basic concepts and technologies of NFV and SDN next-generation networks. Below I have mentioned both links to navigate to those articles as listed. You will understand NFV and SDN architectural design, technology and how it is going to be the current demanding technology where a lot of network administrators what to implement in their company network. Today I will compare NFV and SDN technologies. Some people may think, these two technologies are designed for different kinds of purposes and use within different platforms. You have already learned about them separately. Now let's find out the difference between these technologies and select the best part to implement it in your business.

We have gathered more information and put that information into a table. Then whoever referring the table with a technical network prospective can compare NFV and SDN.

Features	SDN	NFV
Name	Software-Defined Network	Network Function Virtualization
Platform and initiative supporters	Corporate IT, Enterprise network and software vendors	Service Provider, Totally telecom service providers
Protocol	OpenFlow	Support OpenFlow
Where does Application run	Both can run on industry-standard servers
Applications	Data centers and cloud orchestration	Routers, Firewalls, LBs, CDNs, WAN acceleration
Customer benefits	Drives down the complexity	Drives down the complexity and increase agility
Strategy	Split control and data forward plane	Replace network devices with software
Hardware	SDN controller – Main	Virtualized devices on standard X86 servers
Where in the network	Layer 2-3 optimization	Layer 3-7 optimization
Standards	Open networking foundation (ONF) standards	ETSI standards

SDN (Software Defined Network) technology is used where we want to separate the control plane and data plane from a single device. All the network devices such as routers and switches can only have its data plane and the control plane part goes to take care of the SDN controller. OpenFlow protocol involves sending the traffic between the SDN controller and network devices.

NFV (Network Function Virtualization) technology is used when we want to remove many network hardware devices by replacing software define functions. For instance, in a small office network we have to use a WAN optimizer, WAN router for connecting the network to MPLS cloud, to filter the traffic coming from outside - Firewall and core switches. To implementing the NFV technology for reducing the cost on hardware devices, we can set up an x86 server and build virtual machines on it and install operating systems to virtualized the functionality of WAN optimizer, router, and a firewall.

We hope that you have a clear idea about the current demanding technologies like SDN and NFV. If you have any doubts, welcome you all to comment below for further discussion.

Cheers!