VIRTUALIZING THE IOT ECOSYSTEM: A BRIEF REVIEW, ADDRESSING NFV STRATEGIES

Pervasiveness in computing, connectivity, and use of Internet Protocol (IP) contributes highly to the rapid growth of the Internet of things (IoT). The deployment of IoT and its applications range not only from smart cities to ubiquitous healthcare but also to the internet itself, thus resulting in a complex physical infrastructure of diversified network systems. The complicated IoT ecosystem infrastructure poses several challenges in effectively controlling and monitoring the system network functions and services. This triggers the need for dynamic and efficient solutions for management and configuration. The emerging strategy that promises to address the aforementioned challenges is by orchestrating the system network functions and services automatically. In the recent past, automating management and configuration processes to deliver system network functions and services has been an interesting research topic and extensively researched. It is achievable through virtualization technologies namely Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networks (SDN). In this article, a brief overview of the NFV strategies towards virtualizing the IoT ecosystem is addressed. In addition, challenges and insights upon adopting NFV to virtualize the IoT ecosystem are highlighted. The review reveals that, in order to virtualize IoT ecosystem efficiently, there is a need for building an integrated IoT-NFV based framework with in-built automation capabilities by incorporating appropriate virtualization technologies whilst embracing the best design, performance and security principles and practices. Keywords— Network Function Virtualization, Internet of Things, Network Management, Software Defined Network