Role of Network and Platform Functions Virtualization in Future Telco Networks

In the paper we will specify and try to answer some of the most urgent questions related to Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies these days. The SDN is changing the present networks and it also defines the concept how Future Networks will be designed. So therefore we provide an overview about key initiatives, technologies and protocols in our paper. Definitely, the NFV on other hand supports integrated service providers to better utilize and control their cloudified infrastructure to deploy much faster fully virtualized platforms, networks and services. Both of these technologies can be combined and extended by new operation methodologies that can significantly change way of designing, development, testing, deployment and operation approaches. This can significantly improve efficiency in comparison of the traditional Telecommunication environments. There are still many open problems in this area, but our paper presents the potential architecture of the Future Network based on SDN/NFV technologies. We provide a vision how open technologies can enable education and experimenting about SDN/NFV and at the same time to use them to build distributed virtual open laboratories.