Follow up to "has virtualization become obsolete in 5G"?

Sat Jan 16 14:29:06 UTC 2021

Etienne-Victor Depasquale wrote on 16/01/2021 11:34:
> The term NFV is a bit of a stretch for what is really 
> network-function-containerization.

Like ~ everything else relating to computers, network management and 
service provisioning functionality boils down to executing CPU 
instructions on physical devices with service access handles and 
protocols available over a management communications layer. There are 
plenty of choice about what particular abstraction layer you might want 
to sit between between the storage image and the CPU.  Containers have 
been around for years, and have some advantages over hypervisor-based 
virtual machines, in relation to cost and deployment efficiency.  Like 
everything else, there's a tradeoff, and the suitability of containers 
to the function at hand depends on what you're trying to achieve.

The reaction of most technical people to deployment of NFV or 
declaration of NFV's death is going to be more along the lines of 
wondering why telco proponents were so late to the devops / 
containerisation game to start with, and what on earth did they think 
was so innovative about it that it deserved yet another marketing label.

Nick