VLAN-based Traffic Steering for Hierarchical Service Function Chaining

Along the increasing demands for complex networking services, big networking infrastructures, and network service providers aim to provide customized services to the users. Complex services require a composition of intermediate networking Service Functions (SFs). Service Function Chaining (SFC) is a networking concept enabling to compose and force the order of invoking SFs. New technologies such as Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualization promote the SFC dynamic composition and management. However, it is still challenging to implement flexible and scalable SF chains in large networking infrastructures. In this paper, we discuss the concept of hierarchical SFC and show its ability to enhance the network scalability and to simplify SFC management. Moreover, we propose a novel traffic steering method to implement hierarchical SFC without requiring data plane components modification. Our proposed approach enhances the scalability of hierarchical SFC and eases its deployment.