Navigating Network Complexity: Next-generation Routing with SDN, Service Virtualization, and Service Chaining

Chapter 11. Service Virtualization and Service Chaining

In the early days of network engineering, two words could be used to describe the applications running over the network: simple and few. There were several different ways to transfer files, a few ways to talk to someone else (such as email and message boards), and perhaps a few other applications of note. In these ideal times, the end-to-end principle reigned supreme, with hosts only talking to other hosts (or bigger hosts called servers) and the occasional mainframe or mini (remember those?).

This has changed over the years; each new generation of users and businesses have added new ideas about what networks need to support and laid requirements on the network itself.

First, there were ...