The focus of research into 5G networks to date has been largely on the required advances in network architectures, technologies, and infrastructures. Less effort has been put on the applications and services that will make use of and exploit the flexibility of 5G networks built upon the concept of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV). Media-based applications are amongst the most demanding services, requiring large bandwidths for high Manuscript
The lack of interoperability among IoT platforms has led to a fragmented environment, where the users and society as a whole suffer from lock-ins, lack of privacy, and reduced functionality. This paper presents SOFIE, a solution for federating the existing IoT platforms in an open and secure manner using Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) and without requiring modifications to the IoT platforms, and describes how SOFIE is used to enable two complex real life pilots: food supply chain tracking from field to fork and electricity distribution grid balancing with guided electrical vehicle (EV) charging. SOFIE's main contribution is to provide interoperability between IoT systems while also enabling new functionality and business models.
Network function virtualisation (NFV) and software defined networks (SDN) will transform network management and operation tasks into agile development tasks. They will involve software artefacts which are managed and deployed as composite services using DevOps principles. Those softwarised networks rely on complex technology stacks, starting with low-level virtualisation technologies and ranging up to machine learningbased orchestration solutions. One of the main challenges in those environments is to verify that the deployed functions and services operate correctly and meet the quality goals, set by the stakeholders, before they are put to production. We tackle this challenge by introducing the novel concept of a verification and validation (V&V) platform for NFV, which enables automatic testing and qualification of single network functions and complex services. By adding such a platform to the NFV ecosystem, new business models emerge as we discuss in this article. We evaluate our proposed concepts by presenting a case study that uses our open-source V&V platform to verify and validate the behaviour and performance of a real-world network service.
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