Telecommunications networks are a critical infrastructure for economic growth and social well-being. However, previous-generation networks will not be able to meet future needs and the continuously increasing, diverse sets of users, applications, services, and requirements, which call for network administrators to transform them. At the core of this transformation lies the development of infrastructures based on the concepts of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN). The 5GTANGO project proposes a flexible approach to 5G network programming that focuses on the following:

i) a Service Development Kit (SDK) for application development, ii) a repository with advanced validation mechanisms for network services, and iii) a service platform that bridges the gap between business requirement management systems and network management systems.

It proposes the implementation of a vendor-independent platform where the output of the application development environment (which will be an NFV graph) will be automatically validated in the repository, allowing its deployment in the virtualized network infrastructure and orchestration with mechanisms compatible with existing Virtual Infrastructure Managers (VIM) and SDN controllers.

This integrated ecosystem for service implementation and deployment essentially implements an NFV DevOps model between service developers, network administrators, and applications, enhancing performance and enabling the implementation and validation of new services that support the adoption of NFV technologies. The 5GTANGO system will be tested in two pilot cases: factory environments and multimedia. The project will promote collaboration with standardization bodies such as ETSI NFV or IETF, as well as open-source communities like OSM and Open-O. Additionally, the 5GTANGO project aims to collaborate with other initiatives within the 5G-PPP program.

The research team provided results for the analysis of service-level agreements (SLAs) to enable the storage, management, and extraction of parameters/metrics used for the allocation and management of infrastructure in virtualized environments, taking into account the concept of slicing and implementing SLAs in 5G networks. The team also focused on delivering a catalog of VNFs/Network services with value-added mechanisms for analyzing all stored data and metadata (e.g., VNFDs, NSDs, etc.) to offer recommendations for infrastructure changes during service runtime, as well as suggestions for developers.

Additionally, team members contributed to the management and assurance of service quality through mechanisms for customized service agreements in VNFs and by determining weighting factors for different quality parameters to enable optimized network management.