The More the Merrier: Enhancing Reliability of 5G Communication Services with Guaranteed Delay

Abstract: Although network functions virtualization and software-defined networking offer many dynamic features such as flexibility, scalability, and programmability for easy provisioning of services at a lesser cost and time through service function chaining, it introduces new challenges in terms of reliability, availability, and latency of services. Particularly, softwarization of network and service functions (e.g., virtualization, anything as a service, dynamic virtual chaining, and routing) impose high possibility of network failures due to software issues than hardware. In this letter, we propose a novel solution called eRESERV to enhance the reliability of service chains in 5G while meeting the service level agreements.