It is widely accepted that the network of the future will require a greater degree of service awareness and optimal use of network resources. This article presents an architectural design for an open software-defined network infrastructure that enables the composition of fast and guaranteed services in an efficient manner and the execution of these services in an adaptive way, taking into account better shared network resources provided by network virtualization. Validation results are provided with special emphasis on service deployment scalability over virtualized network infrastructures.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
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