Document Type : Review article

Author

• Patikiri Arachchige Don Shehan Nilmantha Wijesekara

Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Galle 80000, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Network Virtualization (NV) techniques enable high scalability and isolation by abstracting physical resources to provide a logical network representation that can coexist with a physical networking framework. Traditional NV is prone to security attacks and has lower privacy and trustfulness compared to blockchain-established NV. We diagnose the BC-established NV construct under 5 segments and closely appraise the literature in reference to NV technique, virtualization technology, BC-related properties, and network properties. We racked up a starting sample of 85 sources by filtering literary work for qualifying conditions searched from article retrieval platforms, engaging a rigorous and prolonged approach. Anchored from this research, in BC-established NV, we demonstrate that BC can act as a broker/manager for NV, act as a secure storage by preventing double-spending attacks, provide secure virtual network embedding with high fault tolerance, engage BC and smart contacts for resource trading in the process of NV, engage dedicated consensus approaches to reach agreement for NV among multiple parties for reducing security attacks, and establish BC-established access control for NV. Complete interpretation disseminates that from interpreted BC-established NV schemes, 45% engage BC and smart contracts for agreements and resource trading for NV, 95% engage regular BC architecture, Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) being the most frequently used consensus, 80% engage the overlay network concept, and it has been engaged abundantly (27.5%) in 5G networks. Finally, we deliberate the possibilities and obstacles of the framework of blockchain-established NV and then provide suggestions to suppress them.

Highlights

• It diagnoses a Blockchain-established Network Virtualization (NV) construct under 5 segments and closely appraises literature in reference to NV technique, virtualization technology, BC-related properties, network properties, and so on.
• It demonstrates that BC can act as broker/manager for NV, act as secure storage preventing double-spending attacks, and provide a secure virtual network embedding with high fault tolerance.
• It engages BC and smart contacts for resource trading in the process of NV, and dedicated consensus approaches to reach an agreement for NV among multiple parties reducing security attacks, and BC-established access control for NV.
• It deliberates the possibilities and obstacles of the framework of blockchain-established NV and then provides suggestions to suppress them.

Keywords

• Network virtualization
• Blockchain
• Slicing
• Entry coordination
• Cryptography
• Overlaying

Main Subjects

• Telecommunications