SENATUS: An Experimental SDN/NFV Orchestrator

The fifth generation telecommunication standard (5G) will make use of novel technologies, such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). New models are integrating SDN and NFV in a control plane entity responsible of the Management and Orchestration (MANO) of the whole system. This entity, acting as director of the 5G control plane, is known as Service Orchestrator. This work presents SENATUS, an experimental service orchestrator targeting research and testing environments. SENATUS implements a set of innovations to support the validation of the future network planner modules that will be integrated on the management entities of the 5G architecture. Furthermore, we present two testbed scenarios to show the capability of SENATUS to control the SDN and NFV technologies previously mentioned.