OpenBox is a framework that effectively decouples the control plane of NFs from their data plane. Similarly to SDN solutions that address only the network’s forwarding plane (e.g., switching, routing), OpenBox provides a framework for network-wide deployment and management of NFs.

OpenBox consists of three logic components. First, user-defined OpenBox Applications provide NF specifications through OpenBox north-bound APIs. Second, a logically-centralized OpenBox Controller is able to merge logic of multiple NFs, possibly from multiple tenants, and to use a network-wide view to efficiently deploy and scale NFs across the network data plane. Finally, OpenBox Instances constitute OpenBox’s data plane and are implemented either purely in software or contain specific hardware support.

Our prototype implementation of the OpenBox framework is available and is open-source.