The China SDN/NFV Conference 2016 was held a few days ago. Xu Lei, leader of Cloud Management Research Team, Cloud Computing Laboratory, China Unicom Research Institute, introduced China Unicom's deployment plan of SDN and NFV at the Conference.
Xu Lei said China Unicom will take advantage of SDN/NFV to cope with the explosive growth of network traffic and the challenges brought by diversified service types to communication network, realizing flexible deployment configuration of the network features as well as providing differentiated services for different network subscribers. On the basis of pilots and small-scale commercial deployment, China Unicom will gradually make live networks shift to SDN/NFV, achieving open, flexible, simple ultra-broadband network on collaboration with cloud.
The future network structure will take data center as the core. Data centers of different levels will carry different VNF to achieve network elements virtualization.
During 2017-2018, China Unicom aims to complete incubation and deployment of SDN/NFV products, such as large-scale SDN application verification, NFV underlying network virtualization enhancement and MANO system implementation. Besides, it expects to finish renovation of the rooms and DC rooms in first-tier cities and major second-tier cities and to expand the scope of data center interconnect (DCI).
During 2019-2020, SDN/NFV will expand in various segments while the experience of SDN/NFV application will be used in core network, transmission network and access network.