Identifying Requirements Affecting Latency in a Softwarized Network for Future 5G and Beyond

The concept of a softwarized network leveraging technologies such as SDN/NFV, comes with different merits such as decreased Operational Expenses (OPEX) and less dependency on underlying hardware components. With the amount of increased flexibility, reconfigurability and programmability attributed to future technologies (i.e., 5G and beyond), and towards the complete network virtualization and softwarization, a new set of requirements/parameters can be identified affecting the latency in a virtualized network. In this paper, we identify different latency requirements for a virtualized network. These requirements include the Virtual Network Function (VNF) deployment time, establishment/connection time and application instantiation time. We further test how some factors such as VNFs' resource usage, the applications running within the VNF and the shared status of the VNF, coordinately affect the identified latency requirement for a virtualized network. Experimentally, for performance analysis, we deploy a softwarized network based on the ETSI-NFV architecture, using open source tools. The results show that the new set of latency requirements is relevant for consideration in order to achieve an overall ultra-reliable low latency and how different the factors can affect these new requirements, especially in the core network. Furthermore, the result of our performance analysis proves the trade-off between latency of a virtualized network and the resource usage of the VNFs.