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Network Service Orchestration: A Survey

Nathan F. Saraiva de Sousa, Danny A. Lachos Perez, Raphael V. Rosa, Mateus A. S. Santos, Christian Esteve Rothenberg

arXiv:1803.06596v4cs.NI

TL;DR

Network Service Orchestration addresses the challenge of automating service deployment across heterogeneous infrastructures and administrative domains. This survey synthesizes the field’s history, technologies, projects, standards, and approaches, proposing a taxonomy while identifying open challenges and research opportunities.

  • Problem

    Network services are commonly designed, deployed, and operated manually across heterogeneous technologies, creating long delivery times and challenges for cross-domain coordination.

  • Method

    The survey reviews historical context, enabling technologies, standardization, projects, solutions, and open challenges, then proposes a taxonomy and maps NSO characteristics to implementations.

  • Results

    The survey provides an overarching understanding of NSO concepts and diverse approaches by connecting research, standardization, software development, and practical solutions.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    NSO spans multi-domain coordination, resource and service modeling, open-source platforms, and orchestration of computing and network resources, with interoperability and automation remaining central concerns.

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    Existing network service orchestration solutions are not yet mature enough, and advanced platforms remain missing.

Abstract

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Business models of network service providers are undergoing an evolving transformation fueled by vertical customer demands and technological advances such as 5G, Software Defined Networking~(SDN), and Network Function Virtualization~(NFV). Emerging scenarios call for agile network services consuming network, storage, and compute resources across heterogeneous infrastructures and administrative domains. Coordinating resource control and service creation across interconnected domains and diverse technologies becomes a grand challenge. Research and development efforts are being devoted to enabling orchestration processes to automate, coordinate, and manage the deployment and operation of network services. In this survey, we delve into the topic of Network Service Orchestration~(NSO) by reviewing the historical background, relevant research projects, enabling technologies, and standardization activities. We define key concepts and propose a taxonomy of NSO approaches and solutions to pave the way towards a common understanding of the various ongoing efforts around the realization of diverse NSO application scenarios. Based on the analysis of the state of affairs, we present a series of open challenges and research opportunities, altogether contributing to a timely and comprehensive survey on the vibrant and strategic topic of network service orchestration.

1. Introduction

Network Service Orchestration addresses fragmented, manual service delivery across heterogeneous technologies and domains by automating coordinated resource and service management. This survey consolidates NSO concepts, technologies, standards, projects, and approaches into a broad systems-oriented framework.

  • Motivation: Manual, hardware-coupled telecommunications workflows can delay end-to-end service delivery for weeks or months.The infrastructure spans radio, access, transport, core, and virtualized data-center networks.
  • Enabling technologies: SDN, NFV, and cloud computing enable software-centric, flexible creation, deployment, and management of network services.These technologies provide complementary functions across networking, network functions, resource virtualization, and orchestration.
  • NSO concept: NSO automates end-to-end service deployment and operation by selecting and controlling resources, services, and systems across potentially multiple operators.It decouples high-level services from underlying controllers, management systems, and virtualized infrastructure.
  • Survey scope: The survey targets fragmented NSO understanding through a comprehensive review of history, enabling technologies, standards, solutions, challenges, and research opportunities.It proposes a taxonomy of NSO characteristics and maps them to open-source platforms and research projects.
  • Scope and model: Its multi-domain perspective covers administrative and technology domains, with multi-domain orchestrators coordinating resources and services through information exchange and marketplace interactions.The reference model includes MDOs for administrative realms and addresses service composition across different domains.
  • Contributions: The survey combines historical analysis, core-function clarification, an NSO taxonomy, standards review, and coverage of research projects and software frameworks.Its organization also includes practical scenarios and mappings between NSO characteristics and implementations.

2. Background

This background frames NSO through cloud computing, SDN, NFV, and orchestration, showing how these technologies support programmable, virtualized, and lifecycle-oriented network services.

  • 2.1. Cloud Computing: Cloud computing virtualizes networks, servers, storage, and services, while orchestration dynamically deploys and manages resources across heterogeneous cloud platforms.Cloud service models include IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
  • 2.2. Software Defined Networking (SDN): SDN separates control logic from forwarding equipment and uses logically centralized controllers to manage network infrastructure.In multi-domain settings, multiple controllers manage specific network segments and coordinate control-plane actions.
  • 2.3. Network Function Virtualization (NFV): NFV separates network functions from hardware, deploying them as VNFs on general-purpose servers for more flexible deployment and dynamic scaling.VNFs can be combined into service chains, and a single VNF may participate in multiple network services.
  • 2.3. Network Function Virtualization (NFV): The ETSI NFV-MANO framework orchestrates physical and virtual resources while managing network-service lifecycle functions across multiple VIMs.NFVO functions include managing service templates and VNF packages, instantiating network services, managing VNFs and VNFMs, and validating resource requests.
  • 2.4. Orchestration: Historical Overview: NSO is the broader high-level orchestration layer, complemented by NFV function programming, SDN networking programming, and cloud resource virtualization.The survey presents these technologies as integrated contributors to network-service lifecycle management, automation, agility, cost reduction, and end-to-end connectivity.

3. Application Scenarios

NSO is presented across application scenarios including mobile networks, network slicing, optical transport, SD-WAN, and cloud data centers, where programmability and automation address heterogeneous resource and service demands.

  • 3.1. Next Generation Mobile Telecommunication Networks: End-to-end orchestration integrates transport, radio, and cloud resources to support flexible 5G service creation across network segments.SDN and NFV provide flexibility and programmability, while orchestration coordinates resources across wireless, aggregation, and core domains.
  • 3.1. Next Generation Mobile Telecommunication Networks: Mobile orchestration is expected to handle congestion, allocate resources dynamically, and reduce load on transport networks and central processing units.
  • 3.1. Next Generation Mobile Telecommunication Networks: Network slicing creates isolated virtual networks for customized services, while lifecycle automation manages preparation, activation, runtime, and decommissioning phases.Dedicated slices can reduce deployment cost, shorten time to market, and support customer-specific networks.
  • 3.2. Optical Networks and SD-WAN: Optical and SD-WAN scenarios use programmable abstractions and orchestrators to optimize paths across heterogeneous technologies, sites, and administrative domains.SD-WAN orchestration tailors and scales paths on demand according to quality-of-service, security, and business policies.
  • 3.3. Cloud Data Centers: Cloud data-center orchestration programs paths for high throughput and low latency, with Google B4 and Andromeda cited as examples.Container orchestration remains a production reality, but seamless integration with network services across data centers remains challenging.

4.1. Definitions

The survey reviews competing definitions of orchestration across standards bodies and research communities, showing that its scope ranges from resource control to multi-domain service lifecycle management.

  • Organizations differ in orchestration scope and assumptions, motivating a review of community definitions to clarify its concepts and significance.
  • Standards bodies: NIST frames orchestration as arranging, coordinating, and managing virtualized infrastructure to provide cloud services.
  • Standards bodies: ETSI and IETF describe orchestration as coordinated processes that automate information-system management toward a common goal, without assigning primacy to one functional block.
  • Standards bodies: ONF treats orchestration as selecting and using resources to satisfy client demands and as a feature of the SDN controller, including service decomposition and distribution.
  • Standards bodies: 3GPP and NGMN emphasize translating service requests into physical or virtual resource configurations, including scaling and geographic distribution in 5G architectures.
  • Standards bodies: MEF defines Lifecycle Service Orchestration as automated service management across multiple operator networks, covering fulfillment, control, assurance, analytics, security, and policy.

4.2. NSO Functionality and Scope

NSO coordinates service composition, resource control, workflows, and lifecycle management above heterogeneous infrastructure, supporting automation from service requests through ongoing operation.

  • Functionalities: Service, lifecycle, and resource orchestration divide responsibilities among service composition, workflow and dependency management, and resource control.These functions have dependency and continuity relationships.
  • Lifecycle and workflow: Lifecycle states trigger ordered workflows: reaching a state such as Created requires completion of all associated component tasks.The example requires creating two VDUs, configuring the network, and running the application.
  • Lifecycle and workflow: Service-lifecycle automation can maintain a desired state and respond proactively to changing conditions without human intervention, supporting resilience and fault tolerance.The survey relates these capabilities to intent-based networking.
  • NSO coordinates service semantics and actions to fulfill requirements while managing an end-to-end network-service lifecycle.The survey presents NSO as a concept spanning multiple technologies rather than a unique technology.
  • Scope: NSO operates above the control and management stack, interacting with OSS/BSS and potentially coordinating multiple MANO and non-MANO elements.MANO alone focuses on VNF instantiation and lifecycle management, whereas NSO coordinates broader service creation.
  • Characteristics: NSO characteristics include high-level multi-domain visibility, intelligent provisioning, single- and multi-domain support, and interaction with diverse orchestration elements.

4.3. Single and Multi-Domain Orchestration

Single-domain orchestration controls resources within one provider boundary, whereas multi-domain orchestration must coordinate end-to-end services without direct knowledge of other providers’ resources and topologies.

  • Single-domain orchestration manages service lifecycles and computing, storage, and networking resources under one provider’s administrative control.
  • Multi-domain orchestration is more complex because local orchestrators lack visibility into other providers’ resources and topologies while delivering end-to-end services.Cross-domain information exchange is required, but the survey reports no standard for this process.
  • Multi-domain architectures: ETSI multi-domain options include splitting NFVO responsibilities, introducing an Umbrella NFVO, or adding the Or-Or reference point between NFVOs.These approaches support service composition and communication across administrative domains.
  • End-to-end services may combine network functions across clouds and geographic locations, requiring workflow management, coordination, and synchronization among infrastructure domains.

4.4. Taxonomy

The survey proposes a seven-aspect taxonomy for characterizing NSO approaches, covering service models, software, resources, technology, application scope, architecture, and standards organizations. It applies these aspects across heterogeneous resources, software artifacts, interfaces, and orchestration architectures.

  • Service Models: Service-model analysis spans cloud, SDN, and NFV offerings such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, NaaS, VNFaaS, NFVIaaS, VNPaaS, and SlaaS.These services can operate in parallel and provide features to customers, enterprises, or other providers.
  • Software: Software analysis covers orchestration artifacts from single-cloud environments to multi-domain scenarios, including open-source, research, and commercial solutions.The survey also considers governance, licensing, and management interfaces such as CLI, API, and GUI.
  • Taxonomy: The NSO taxonomy organizes approaches into seven aspects: service models, software, resources, technology, application scope, architecture, and standards developing organizations.These aspects are presented as the basis for characterizing orchestration solutions.
  • Resource: NSO coordinates heterogeneous network, compute, storage, memory, and platform-awareness resources underlying network-service deployment.Virtualization techniques abstract shared resources into infrastructures that can host network services.

5. NSO and Standardization

Interoperability and standardization are presented as essential to successful NSO, requiring open interfaces, architectural guidance, frameworks, and protocol extensions.

  • Standardization: Open interfaces and standardization are essential design goals for overcoming interoperability problems in network service orchestration.Standardization efforts provide architectural guidelines, frameworks, and protocol extensions that enable NSO.

( ETSI)

ETSI NFV defines the MANO framework for orchestrating VNFs over virtualized infrastructure, while evolving work addresses broader NSO workflows and multi-domain operation.

  • ETSI NFV: ETSI ISG NFV defines MANO to orchestrate VNFs on virtualized infrastructures, with NFVO coordinating infrastructure resources across multiple VIMs.NSO logically composes NFVO functions to support service workflows such as scaling and topology or performance management.
  • Standardization Outcomes: Table 2 is identified as presenting NSO standardization outcomes.The supplied passage provides the table title but no outcome values or comparisons.

3GPP

The survey reviews standardization and research efforts from MEF, TM Forum, IETF, NGMN, 3GPP, and OASIS that support lifecycle management, interoperability, automation, and next-generation network services.

  • MEF: MEF’s LSO provides reusable specifications, common information models, and open APIs for automated end-to-end connectivity-service lifecycle management.Its functions include ordering, configuration, fulfillment, assurance, and billing.
  • TM Forum: TM Forum develops OSS best practices and the ZOOM program to accommodate SDN/NFV impacts on operational management systems.Its business-process and application maps span service design, runtime operation, assurance, charging, and billing.
  • IETF: IETF working groups provide protocols, information models, and interfaces that enable path computation, service-function chaining, and orchestrated network services.The survey notes that the protocol list is incomplete and will require further extensions as interoperability needs broaden.
  • NGMN: NGMN defines 5G orchestration requirements and architecture principles covering slicing, real-time provisioning, automation, scalability, and self-healing.Its framework includes vertical, federated, and hybrid orchestration architectures across business, resource, operator, and domain levels.
  • 3GPP: 3GPP studies management enhancements for next-generation networks and specifies protocol-neutral resource models supporting 5G network-slice lifecycle management.The scope includes operational features such as real-time, on-demand, and automated management.
  • OASIS: OASIS TOSCA standardizes portable operational management of cloud applications and services across their lifecycles.Its Simple Profile in YAML v1.0 was approved as a standard in 2016.

6. Research Projects

The survey reviews research projects that automate network-service orchestration across heterogeneous technologies, resources, and administrative domains. These projects address lifecycle management, flexibility, interoperability, and business interactions in multi-domain environments.

  • The survey positions NSO research projects by reviewing their scope and status across multiple technologies and domains.The overview is organized around project names and durations.
  • T-NOVA: T-NOVA integrates automated provisioning, configuration, monitoring, and optimization of network connectivity and network functions through an NFV orchestration platform, infrastructure management, and marketplace.Its TeNOR orchestrator separates network-service lifecycle management from virtualized resource orchestration.
  • Unify: Unify uses recursive hierarchical composition and a common information model to orchestrate compute, storage, and networking across technology-specific domains.Its demonstrations used ESCAPE to model VNFs over data centers connected through an SDN-enabled network.
  • 5GEx: 5GEx targets agile wholesale exchange of resources and virtual network services across administrative domains, extending ETSI NFV MANO for heterogeneous multi-vendor environments.Its architecture addresses B2B and B2C relationships and includes topology, SLA, policy, monitoring, and service-catalog functions.
  • SONATA: SONATA combines an SDK for developing and validating VNFs and network services with a service platform for lifecycle orchestration over virtual infrastructure.Its use cases include NFVIaaS, VNFaaS, vCDN, personal security, multi-domain scenarios, legacy support, and network slicing.
  • VITAL: VITAL virtualizes satellite network functions and supports multi-domain orchestration for hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks using an ETSI NFV-aligned architecture.The project produced open-source packages including Open-SAND and X-MANO, which supports hierarchical, cascading, and peer-to-peer orchestration.

7. Enabling Technologies and Solutions

The survey reviews open-source and other orchestration solutions spanning cloud, SDN, NFV, and legacy environments. These platforms implement service design, deployment, lifecycle management, resource orchestration, and interaction with infrastructure managers, but differ in scope and integration.

  • Existing orchestration solutions range from open-source, proposed, and commercial frameworks, with differing technology coverage, domains, and MANO components.The survey notes that some solutions are tied to specific environments or support only limited numbers of services.
  • Open-source foundations: Open-source foundations host major networking projects such as ONOS, CORD, OpenDaylight, OPNFV, and ONAP, while many initiatives remain in early stages.Open-O was created for agile SDN and NFV operations, and ONOS developed orchestration for CORD.
  • Cloudify: Cloudify provides NFVO and Generic-VNFM capabilities across VIMs, containers, and non-virtualized infrastructure, with TOSCA-based end-to-end lifecycle automation.Its ARIA engine supports model-driven, application-centric orchestration and ongoing automation, although Cloudify is not fully MANO-compliant.
  • ESCAPE: ESCAPE operates across service, orchestrator, and infrastructure layers, mapping service-function chains to a global resource view before sending service parts to local orchestrators.It supports multi-domain orchestration and remote recursive domain management.
  • ONAP and Open Baton: ONAP unifies design, creation, orchestration, monitoring, and lifecycle management of physical and virtual network functions, while Open Baton provides a vendor-independent ETSI NFV MANO implementation.Open Baton includes NFVO, VNFM, marketplace, autoscaling, fault management, and lifecycle-event components.
  • OSM and Tacker: ETSI Open Source MANO and Tacker provide ETSI-aligned orchestration capabilities, with OSM separating service and resource orchestration and Tacker targeting OpenStack-based NFV infrastructure.Tacker integrates directly with OpenStack and supports service-function chaining, autoscaling, and TOSCA NFV profiles.

8. Challenges and Research Opportunities

The survey identifies interoperability, resource and service modeling, lifecycle automation, performance, and scalability as central NSO challenges. It emphasizes that heterogeneous domains and implementations require common models, translation mechanisms, monitoring, and distributed orchestration approaches.

  • 8.1. Interoperability: NSO must integrate domains that differ in geography, administration, management, and technology, while interoperability remains necessary for end-to-end services spanning multiple providers and vendors.Such integration is difficult because domains expose unique proprietary interfaces and actors have different incentives and business models.
  • 8.1. Interoperability: Different ETSI MANO-based solutions use distinct implementations and data models, making cross-solution service chaining costly in development effort and time-to-market.Standardization, shared APIs, data models, and reusable open-source components are identified as paths toward interoperability.
  • 8.2. Resource and Service Modeling: Higher-level policies must be translated into lower-level configurations, requiring templates and standards for automated and consistent translation across heterogeneous infrastructures.TOSCA, YANG, and HOT are cited as modeling languages, while ETSI descriptors define network functions and services without fully extending resource modeling.
  • 8.3. Lifecycle Management: Network-service lifecycle requirements become harder to deploy when services need specialized resources or span multiple domains, motivating lifecycle automation and closed-loop control.ONAP’s CLAMP is described as supporting automation, performance optimization, and lifecycle management using analytics and machine-learning-assisted decisions.
  • 8.4. Performance: Virtualization creates a trade-off between performance and flexibility because some applications require capabilities that virtualized infrastructure may degrade.Performance monitoring, SLA protection, traffic-forwarding and function-placement composition, and bottleneck avoidance are also required.
  • 8.5. Scalability: Centralized orchestration can create scalability issues, so distributing orchestration among multiple actors may better accommodate layer-specific characteristics.The survey presents multi-orchestrator approaches as an alternative to a single global orchestrator.

9. Conclusions

The survey presents NSO as a strategic response to telecommunications transformation through cloud computing, SDN, and NFV. It consolidates concepts, technologies, projects, standards, solutions, applications, taxonomy, and open challenges into a reference for researchers and practitioners.

  • Cloud computing, SDN, and NFV provide software-driven paths for addressing telecommunications challenges, while NSO converges technology domains for broader and more agile service footprints.
  • The survey reviews NSO concepts, enabling technologies, standardization, research projects, commercial solutions, open issues, and research challenges to develop an overarching understanding.
  • The survey presents application scenarios, observes growing use of open-source components, and defines a taxonomy of leading NSO characteristics and features.It also notes that orchestration platforms still require further evolution before becoming suitable for production.
  • The survey is intended as a guideline and reference for researchers and practitioners studying NSO fundamentals, related work, and open research questions.
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