Blockchain and Sharding for Scalable Decentralized Virtual Network Function Management

With the advent of 5G systems, the need for large data bandwidth has become more prevalent. Nielsen law states that network bandwidth is expected to grow 50% each year (10% less than computer speed as predicted by Moore’s law). To cater vast amount of volume, virtualization of network functions has become a need of the hour. One such technique of virtual network function is network slicing, which results in better bandwidth utilization using orthogonal frequencies. The major limitation of network slicing is data leak between slices. A distributed security protocol like blockchain can improve the security between slices. Various public blockchain protocols with block sharding techniques are discussed and methodology for implementation of blockchain protocol with network slice controller is discussed in this work.