Advances in Service Orchestration and Automation for Softwarized Networks

Dear Colleagues,

Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) are currently considered as key technologies to transform networks into softwarized networks where 5G goals can be met. However, they are becoming insufficient to yield the flexibility and sustainability needed to deploy and maintain the network infrastructure in the next decades.

One of the core challenges in future 5G networks is automation and end-to-end service orchestration with less human interaction, which requires high-level skills and is extremely error-prone. To overcome those limitations, intent-based networking (IBN) has emerged as a novel form of networks orchestration that allows automating the management of network operations and increasing their availability. IBN offers to network administrators a simple way to express their business objectives while enabling the network software to automatically achieve those goals. In fact, intents rely on the programmability feature of SDN to plan, design and operate networks in a simple and agile manner, thus abstracting networks’ complexity.

Other paradigms such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can be used to achieve network management goals through adapative learning and decision-making features. In such a way, data-driven automation can be coupled with policy-based orchestration to achieve dynamic and autonomous operations necessary for a promising end-to-end network management.

This Special Issue will cover the latest contributions of researchers in, but not limited to, the following research topics: advances in automated design, deployment and validation, end-to-end service orchestration, intent-based networking, network slicing, dynamic SDN and NFV operation, application of AI and ML to simplify deployment and operation in softwarized networks.

Dr. Molka Gharbaoui
Guest Editor

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• SDN
• NFV
• orchestration
• IBN
• automation
• artificial intelligence
• machine learning