CLOUDSAT Scenarios for integration of satellite components in future networks

The satcom community is expected to derive significant benefits from the adoption of the SDN/NFV model and the interoperability/integration with terrestrial software-based networks. Some high-level benefits can be identified per category of stakeholders as follows:

• Benefits for satcom equipment manufacturers: by adopting the SDN/NFV paradigm, equipment vendors developing specialised networking equipment for specific use (onboard or ground), have the potential to “open” their platform by making it programmable and reconfigurable, compliant with standard northbound interfaces for management; this is a unique opportunity to drastically widen their target customer groups and thus strengthen their position in the global market.
• Benefits for satellite network operators: the software-based network paradigm is expected to be a very attractive revenue source for satcom operators, who are able to monetize on their network by offering new satellite-based services and by charging customers according to the actual usage of in-network resources, as opposed to claiming flat fees for plain connectivity services providing applications “over-the-top” with no QoS guarantees and no in-network functionalities. Another key benefit for satellite network operators is the cost reduction, achieved via NFV, i.e., via the employment of commodity server nodes for network functionalities (e.g. proxying, PEP, caching, transcoding etc.), instead of expensive specialised networking equipment; this also allows easy upgrade and replacement, but also deployment of new innovative functions with minimal delay and cost.
• Benefits for satellite network customers: Satellite network customers – especially enterprise ones – gain access to a fully virtualized flexible infrastructure with elevated management and configuration capabilities. They are able to interconnect remote locations via isolated virtual slices with flexible SLAs and QoS, using both terrestrial and satellite connectivity, and be charged according to usage, while the service resources can be at any time re-scaled according to their needs. Furthermore, the capabilities of NFV allow them to migrate hardware networking appliances (network gateways, firewalls, transcoders, etc.) to the operators’ cloud infrastructure, thus shifting CAPEX to OPEX and enjoying all the advantages of the cloud paradigm.