There is little doubt that SDN (Software Defined Networking) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) are, jointly, a disruption and the breaking point for the telecommunication industry. The promise of lower cost and enhanced functionality of a service provider network is now palpable as we start seeing both technologies mature.
As these technologies converge toward a standard approach, the next step is to look into the details of actual implementation. Among those details, the issue of failure prevention of the network supporting and implementing the said virtualization stands out since a bad implementation in this new control layer approach could, ultimately, create critical failures in the data layer.
This paper explores this topic aiming to raise awareness of the potential complexity of the said network which cannot be omitted from the overall SDN and NFV business case.