A user-centric SDN management architecture for NFV-based residential networks

The residential gateway is a key device in the provision of Internet access to a household or to a small office. Managing a residential network nowadays means configuring the functionality provided by the residential gateway, which is often a task that requires a certain level of technical expertise that most residential users lack. Internet Service Providers sometimes address this usability problem by managing the residential gateway from a central location and offering a way of configuring simple functions such as the password of the Wi-Fi network through a web-based application. In this paper a new user-centric management architecture is proposed, to increase the active engagement of residential users in the management tasks of their own networks, improving the usability of the network and facilitating the provision of new services. In this approach, residential network management applications are split in two components: a front-end handling user interaction and running on the user's preferred device (PC, laptop, smartphone); and a back-end built on top of both the Software Defined Networking (SDN) and the Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) paradigms. The solution takes advantage of the fine-grained control of network traffic and the convenience to communicate network events provided by SDN and the outsourcing of traditional network functions like routing or NAT from the residential gateway to a cloud-based infrastructure managed by the Internet Service Provider. In this paper the advantages and challenges of this approach are discussed, based on the results obtained from a proof of concept system that has been developed to evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposal.