A survey of network virtualization

Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and policies, alterations to the existing Internet architecture are now limited to simple incremental updates: deployment of any new, radically different technology is next to impossible. To fend off this ossification, network virtualization has been propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm. By introducing a plurality of heterogeneous network architectures cohabiting on a shared physical substrate, network virtualization promotes innovations and diversified applications. In this paper, we survey the existing technologies and a wide array of past and state-of-the-art projects on network virtualization followed by a discussion of major challenges in this area. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.