The case for serverless mobile networking

Proceeding of: IFIP Networking Conference 2020, Paris, France, 22-26 June 2020 (Virtual conference).The softwarization of communication networks provides notable benefits, such as flexibility, improved resource efficiency, and commoditization. In exchange, softwarization requires an increased management overhead and the need to re-design network operation. While the mobile networking eco-system is currently adapting this new paradigm with other network-related aspects (e.g., network slicing), cloud computing already addressed such problems with the introduction of serverless architectures, also known as Function as a Service (FaaS). With this approach, the software is decomposed into its minimum building blocks, i.e., functions, maximizing scalability, resource efficiency, and flexibility. In this paper, we analyze the potential adoption of the FaaS paradigm by the mobile networking ecosystem, discussing the implicit advantages, the challenges to address, and some solutions to overcome them.This work was partially supported by the European Commission in the framework of the H2020 5G-PPP 5G-EVE 5GROWTH, and 5G-TOURS projects