Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is the practice of running network functions, such as firewalls, NAT, and load balancers, as software applications on virtual machines (VMs). This allows for greater flexibility and agility in network operations, as well as the ability to scale network functions more easily.
Traditionally, NFV has been implemented by deploying VNFs on a hypervisor, such as VMware vSphere or OpenStack. The VNFs are then stitched together by an orchestrator, such as OpenStack Heat or Kubernetes, to create a chain of services in a network.
InsidePacket’s solution takes this approach even further by virtualizing the functions themselves and applying them directly to the data plane of the solution. This removes the need to chain services, and allows for more efficient and scalable network