The 46th plenary meeting of ETSI NFV took place in the historic city of Xi’an, China between 3rd and 7th June 2024. The NFV#46 meeting was hosted by ZTE Corporation in their ZTE Hotel building. The ISG community was very pleased to attend the first ETSI NFV plenary meeting back in China since the pandemic. Apart from enjoying various kinds of delicious traditional food during the week, the meeting attendees made the most of their trip by exploring the beautiful city of Xi’an. A few of the participants even managed to visit the ‘Terracotta Army’ at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, which is located in one of the districts of Xi’an.

Figure 1: Opening plenary session at NFV#46

On the opening day of NFV#46, a new entry in the series of ETSI NFV Workshops on Telco cloud native & AI took place where network operators, vendors, service providers and hardware manufacturers presented their views on cloud-native transformation of telecom networks. In addition, there were presentations for further evolving telecom networks from cloud-native to ‘AI-native’. The role of AI in enabling autonomous network management of cloud-native telecom networks was also discussed during the workshop. More information on the ETSI NFV Telco cloud native & AI workshop is available here.

Another highlight from the NFV#46 plenary meeting is a joint workshop between ETSI NFV and 3GPP SA5 organized by the officials from both SDOs. The purpose of this workshop was to gain insights into current and planned activities of both organizations, potentially develop a common understanding, identify possible synergies and areas of collaboration. Participants from both organizations had the opportunity to present the progress on standardization work on energy efficiency, VNF Generic OAM functions and PaaS, and support for containerized network functions, all of which are topics of mutual interest. In addition, information about each organization’s release plans for the 2024‑2025 timeframe was also exchanged. It was proposed to consider the possibility of follow up joint workshops between ETSI NFV and 3GPP SA5 to discuss energy efficiency, VNF Generic OAM and PaaS, and additional topics of mutual interest like Intent management.

On the technical side, various topics and features made progress in respective WGs. ETSI ISG NFV had already finalized almost all the specification work for the first drop of Release 5 normative work (ed511) between NFV#45 and NFV#46 meetings.

Based on the progresses during NFV#46, the entire ed511 package is expected to be published soon. For example, at this plenary meeting, IFA WG finalized the initial edition of ETSI GS NFV‑IFA 053 “Requirements and interface specification for Physical Infrastructure Management (PIM)". The final draft of ETSI GS NFV-IFA 053 (to be published as v5.1.1) will seek approval from the ISG via remote consensus.

During NFV#46, work on the second drop (ed521) started in the IFA WG with contributions related to features: “FEAT19b: NFV Connectivity”, FEAT21: “5GNFV”, FEAT24: “VNF‑OAM”, “FEAT28: Fault Management Models”, “FEAT29: Green NFV”.

There were also two joint sessions between WGs, IFA-SEC joint session and IFA‑SOL joint session. During the IFA-SEC joint session, both IFA and SEC WGs agreed on the final draft of ETSI GS NFV‑IFA 026 v5.1.1, specifications related to certificate management in NFV. The final draft will seek ISG approval via remote consensus. The interworking method between the two WGs for progressing specification work of common interest (like ENH01.01) was also updated to simplify the relevant processes.

During the IFA-SOL joint session, both WGs discussed the candidate features list for the second drop of Release 5 (ed521). Stage 3 works on PIM and Management Data Analytics (MDA) were discussed. Discussions were fruitful in promoting synergy and proactive coordination between the IFA and SOL WGs working on different stages of NFV specifications development cycle.

In the EVE WG, Release 6 study items DGR/NFV-EVE023 “Report on new infrastructure resources for NFV” and DGR/NFV‑EVE025 “Report on Serverless and other application virtualization forms in NFV” made good progress. In addition, work on a new Release 6 report DGR/NFV‑EVE026 “Report on NFV support for computing and network convergence” started with the agreement of contributions related to the scope and the initial skeleton of the group report.

SOL WG made progress on several work items, including new Stage 3 specifications DGS/NFV‑SOL022 “Protocols and Data Models for Policy descriptor”, DGS/NFV‑SOL023 “Protocols and Data Models specification for CMF - NFV-MANO reference point” and DGS/NFV‑SOL024 “Protocols and Data Models Specification for VNF Generic OAM functions and PaaS Services”.

The SEC WG kickstarted work on ed521 of ETSI GS NFV-IFA 033 as part of “ENH01.01: Certificate Management”. Additionally, the WG made progress on several security work items, including DGS/NFV‑SEC020, DGS/NFV‑SEC023, DGS/NFV‑SEC026, DGS/NFV‑SEC029 through DGS/NFV‑SEC031 on the topics of identity management, container security, and isolation of trust domains.

During the closing session, ETSI ISG NFV approved the first Release 5 version of ETSI GS NFV‑IFA 049 v5.1.1, specifications related to VNF genreic OAM functions and other PaaS Services. This Release 5 version of the specification incorporates significant enhancements over its Release 4 counterpart and offers a comprehensive set of amendments that delineate the PaaS services framework in NFV.

ETSI NFV continues exploring new technical dimensions in Release 6 and several new work items (NWIs) were approved. Two NWIs in the EVE Working Group (WG) were approved, namely, “Report on Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) in NFV” and “Report on NFV support for computing and network convergence”. One NWI in the IFA WG, “Specification of management requirements in NFV automation”, and another NWI in the SOL WG, “NFV Telco Cloud Data Analytics Service Stage 3”, will be approved via remote consensus. Besides these new work items, several Stage 2 specifications in IFA WG will be reopened for continuation of normative work in the second drop of Release 5 (ed521).

Looking ahead, ISG NFV discussed several dimensions for the ‘Future of NFV ISG’ in a dedicated session. ISG leadership will put forward a 2‑year extension request for the ISG to the ETSI Board in September. Other discussions were about future planning and potential restructuring or transformation of ISG NFV, several possible alternatives were discussed. Discussions around increasing participation from Asian operators in developing NFV specifications also took place. Another discussion point was about the way EVE WG can attract emerging business use cases from telecom network operators as part of its Stage 1 (informative) work before IFA and SOL WGs start the Stage 2/3 (normative) work for realizing those use cases.

In keeping with the spirit of long-standing collaboration between NFV and opensource community, SOL WG discussed feedback from OpenStack Tacker community on the NFV API conformance test suite, which is based on test descriptions in ETSI GS NFV‑TST 010. Tacker community’s feedback and input on interconnected test cases were analysed by SOL WG, TST010 rapporteur and STF experts, and a way forward has been endorsed to support new testing scenarios.

The NFV community meets again in mid-October for NFV#47 meeting, which will be hosted by Huawei in Paris, France.

Figure 2: Meeting participants at NFV#46