An SDN/NFV telco operator platform for video broadcasting

In the last few years, SDN and NFV have introduced a new way to design, deploy, and manage networking and application services in telecommunications networks. In this context, this article presents an SDN/NFV-based platform for telco operators who intend to enter the market of video broadcasting service providers. The proposed platform allows telco operators to achieve deployment simplification and management cost reduction to support big/small live streaming content providers, and even unusual video broadcasters, in transmitting video flows to a number of interested users that can be either fixed or mobile, without the need to adopt a dedicated and expensive data delivery infrastructure. The design of the architecture proposed in this article is the result of a cooperative work realized by Telecom Italia, the University of Catania, and Wave Joint Open Lab (JOL), representing three of the most important roles in the evolution process of telecommunications networks toward network softwarization, that is, telco operator, academia, and research lab. Besides an operational and functional description of the proposed architecture, the article discusses implementation aspects of the platform, by introducing a proof of concept that has been realized on the JOLNet platform, a nationwide Italian SDN experimental network developed by Telecom Italia to interconnect its JOL labs with a large-scale geographical facility, with the aim of carrying on research and experimentations on SDN technologies and applications.