ch emulates dedi- cated hardware. The end users have the same experience on a virtual machine as they would have on dedi- cated hardware. Virtual machines do not require specialized, hypervisor-specific hardware. Virtualization does, however, require more bandwidth, storage, and processing capacity than a traditional server or desktop the physical hardware is going to host multiple running virtual machines. VMs can easily be moved, copied, and reassigned between host servers to optimize hardware resource utilization. Introduction and Background xlvii Edge cloud Core cloud (MEC) (vEPC/5GC) ((2)) Cache Internert server MVO server Ultra-high density (eMBB) slice Access management ((2)) Mobility management UP/CP Session management Charging Telephony services slice ((2)) Access management UP/CP Session management loT server Massive MTC slice ((2)) V2X Server V2X server DU:Distributed unit UP:User plane CP:Control plane Ultra-reliable MTC slice TCP:Transport control protocol IMS:IP multimedia subsystem MVO:Mobile video optimization SDN:Software-defined network Fronthaul Backhaul (IP/MPLS-SDN) Connectivity among by the SDN controller Figure 12 Illustration of network slicing concept 43]. edge cloud, whereas the core network operates as core cloud. Connectivity among VMs located on the edge and core clouds are provisioned using SDN. Network slices are auto- matically configured and created for each service (i.e., voice service slice, massive IoT slice, mission-critical IoT slice). Fig. 12 shows how applications dedicated for each service can be hypothetically virtualized and implemented in each slice. In the example shown in the figure slices that have been configured for the specific services contain the following components [43]: Mobile broadband slice: All virtualized DU, 5GC user-plane, and cache server in the edge cloud, and virtualized 5GC control-plane as well as mobile video optimization (MVO) server in the core cloud. Voice services slice: 5GC user-plane and control-plane functions with full mobility sup- port f