How is NFV different from SDN?

NFV is often mixed up with SDN. SDN is an approach introduced to bring intelligence into the network, while NFV is used to migrate network appliances such as IDS, VPN, and load balancers from the physical hardware to a virtualized platform.

NFV technologies help cut down cost relatively but without an intelligent approach introduced to manage the virtualized resources. The overall operational cost remains the same because it suffers major constraints that physical hardware deployments suffer, such as manual management of policies.

SDN introduces automation in network infrastructures such that the virtualized services created by NFV can be more methodical and optimized for the maximum utilization of resources. The preceding diagram shows a pictorial view of SDN and NFV combined in a network.

NFV can exist fully without SDN, but SDN is the boost needed to reap the maximum benefit from NFV technology. Even though both technologies differ, combining them allows reduced capital and operational cost as well as optimized traffic flow across the network.