Are CNFs, VNFs?

The answer is yes. Our recent report “The VNFO – Ripe for Change” says this loudly and clearly.

Pardon the atrocious image. But I hope it encapsulates the dilemma appropriately.

It is important to reiterate the reasons for including containers under VNF and in essence, Kubernetes under VNFO.

Both VMs and containers are virtualization methodologies. Thus, network functions synthesized using VMs and containers qualify as VNFs.

In VNFs orchestrated by containers are sometimes referred to as cloud-native NFs (CNFs). Insight Research has also employed this term as early as 2020. Over time however, we have observed that the usage of CNFs is neither consistent nor uniform.

Most ‘traditional’ MANOs such as ONAP, OSM and all proprietary offerings now support containers and Kubernetes. Containers are thus one more means towards achieving the end-objective of VNFs.

In such situations, Insight Research finds it more appropriate to use VNF as an umbrella term and under this term, refer to VM or container as the specific virtualization methodology.

The question then arises – where would we slot NFs orchestrated by containers encapsulated in VMs? Answer is containers. Similarly, NFs orchestrated by VMs encapsulated in containers are slotted under VMs.

Kaustubha Parkhi Principal Analyst, Insight Research

RELATED BLOGS

What ails 5G-SA?

Posted: August 11, 2022

      Our recent report “Virtual Core – Gateway to the “Real 5G”; brought out one thing very clearly – 5G SA is clearly taking longer than anticipated.  The reasons are many – telco ennui with the constant architectural flux without commensurate returns being the main one. Telcos have had their fingers burnt with the seemingly never-ending … Continue reading What ails 5G-SA?

AI, RAN and Delay-Doppler – How Cohere does it

Posted: April 4, 2024

      Agreed. The title has too many nouns! Each of the nouns is important though, as we will find out. Allow me to explain. So this article is a profile of Cohere Technologies. Cohere features in our report “AI and RAN – How fast will they run”. As you would now guess, Cohere … Continue reading AI, RAN and Delay-Doppler – How Cohere does it

Is Open RAN Finally Crossing the Urban Massive MIMO Barrier?

Posted: February 24, 2026

      Early February brought an announcement that deserves far more attention than it received. Another day, another Open RAN press release! Only it isn’t. Massive MIMO in dense urban environments stresses Open RAN. Rural deployments are no big deal, suburban infill is still manageable. Urban macro is where the real spectral pressure can … Continue reading Is Open RAN Finally Crossing the Urban Massive MIMO Barrier?