NetOr: A Microservice Oriented Inter-Domain Vertical Service Orchestrator for 5G Networks
Direito, R. D.
; Gomes, D.
; Alegria, J.
;
Corujo, D.
;
Gomes, D.Gomes
Journal of Internet Services and Applications Vol. 14, Nº 1, pp. 136 - 150, September, 2023.
ISSN (print): 1867-4828
ISSN (online): 1869-0238
Scimago Journal Ranking: 0,49 (in 2023)
Digital Object Identifier: 10.5753/jisa.2023.3207
Abstract
Most modern 5G Vertical Service Orchestrators present various limitations. Among these, one may highlight (i) the employment of monolithic architectures, (ii) the lack of standardized APIs and methodologies, (iii)
the minimum support for inter-domain scenarios, and (iv) the impossibility of performing run-time operations over
Vertical Services. To achieve a fully-fledged Vertical Service Orchestrator, these problems must be solved. This is
the focus of the work presented in this article. Our work presents a new 5G Vertical Service orchestration system
named NetOr, which tackles all the listed limitations and can support complex and intricate use cases. NetOr was
implemented according to a microservice architecture. Thus, it has increased flexibility, scalability, and maintainability. Moreover, NetOr inherited most advantages of the modern Vertical Service Orchestrators and, therefore,
can be considered an improvement of said orchestrators. Furthermore, this work also presents a Proof-of-Concept
solution to achieve inter-domain communication through the orchestration of an End-To-End Network Slice that
establishes several VPN tunnels between the domains encompassed by the Network Slice