Edge Microservice Deployment and Management Using SDN-Enabled Whitebox Switches

This work advances a 6G-ready, micro-granular SDN fabric that unifies high-performance edge data planes with intent-driven, multi-domain orchestration and cloud offloading. First, edge and cell-site whiteboxes are upgraded with Smart Network Interface Cards and embedded AI accelerators, enabling line-rate processing of data flows and on-box learning/inference directly in the data plane. This pushes functions such as traffic classification, telemetry, and anomaly mitigation to the point of ingress, reducing latency and backhaul load. Second, an SDN controller, i.e., ETSI TeraFlowSDN, is extended to deliver multi-domain SDN orchestration with native lifecycle management (LCM) for whitebox Network Operating Systems—covering onboarding, configuration-drift control, rolling upgrades/rollbacks, and policy-guarded compliance—so operators can reliably manage heterogeneous edge fleets at scale. Third, the SDN controller incorporates a new NFV-O client that seamlessly offloads network services—such as ML pipelines or NOS components—to telco clouds via an NFV orchestrator (e.g., ETSI Open Source MANO), enabling elastic placement and scale-out across the edge–cloud continuum. Together, these contributions deliver an open, programmable platform that couples in-situ acceleration with closed-loop, intent-based orchestration and elastic cloud resources, targeting demonstrable gains in end-to-end latency, throughput, operational agility, and energy efficiency for emerging 6G services.