.1.4 BENEFITS OF NFV A typical service provider's network consists of a large number of proprietary hardware switches, routers, and appliances. Creating and launching a new network service often requires adding yet another variety of proprietary systems. In addition to the capital expense required, the space and power these hardware appliances consume represents a significant operating expense. These chal- lenges are further compounded by the increasing costs of energy and the scarcity of the special- ized skills needed to design, integrate, and operate complex hardware-based appliances. Moreover, appliances rapidly reach end of life, which leads to a procure-design-integrate-deploy cycle that has to be continuously repeated with little or no revenue benefit. In addition, hardware lifecycle is becoming shorter as technology changes and service innovation accelerates, and this can inhibit Building the Network of the Future the expeditious roll out of new revenue-producing network services and constrain innovation in an increasingly network-centric world. Taken together, all these issues serve to constrain innovation and inhibit the expeditious rollout of new network services. NFV technology makes it possible to envision changes in network archi- tecture without having to retire and redeploy infrastructure and incur the associated capital invest- ment. Because the essence of networking is now provided through software, it becomes possible to build a low-cost generic hardware fabric and deploy multiple VNFs to implement all the network functions defined in the service provider network architecture. VNFs offer many other benefits including, but not limited to Reduced unique equipment diversity and reduced power consumption through consolidat- ing equipment and exploiting the economies of scale of the IT industry. Drive independent scaling and innovation by architecturally decoupling the network func- tion (based in software) from the support infrastructure (based in hardware). Faster time to market by minimizing the 