For decades, networks have been built on the same fundamental principle: dedicated hardware appliances for each network function. Need a firewall? Buy a box. Need load balancing? Purchase another ...

The phrase software-defined networking (SDN) was coined when it was necessary to distinguish the concept from the hardware-based variety. Since that time, "SDN" has come to mean the type of dynamic ...

Virtual machines and virtual network functions, or VMs and VNFs for short, are the standard compute units in modern enterprise, cloud, and telecommunications datacenters. But varying VM and VNF ...