SDN	Software-Defined Networks
NFV	Network Function Virtualization
ETSI	European Telecommunications Standards Institute
ONF	Open Networking Foundation
ITU	International Telecommunication Union
IoT	Internet of Things
4G	Fourth Generation
5G	Fifth Generation
SA	Standalone
NSA	Non-Standalone
MNO	Mobile network operator
VoIP	Voice over Internet Protocol
SBA	Service-based architecture
AI	Artificial Intelligence
OTT	Over-the-top
CAPEX	Capital Expenditures
OPEX	Operational Expenditures
DDoS	Distributed Denial-of-Service
NS	Network slicing
VNF	Virtual Network Functions
BGWO	Binary Grey Wolf Optimization
DDRL	Double Deep Reinforcement Learning
BIP	Behavior–interaction–priorities
MILP	Mixed integer linear programming
SFC	Service Function Chain
6G	Sixth Generation
API	Application Programming Interfaces
SLA	Service Level Agreements
RDB	Resource Database
LLDP	Link Layer Discovery Protocol
STP	Spanning Tree Protocol
BFD	Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
ICMP	Internet Control Message Protocol
TLS	Transport Layer Security
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
NOS	Network Operating System
DPCF	Data Plane Control Function
ON.Lab	Open Networking Lab
RTT	Round-trip time
NFVI	NFV Infrastructure
COTS	Commercially available off-the-shelf
DAS	Direct Attached Storage
NAS	Network Attached Storage
SAN	Storage Area Network
NIC	Network interface card
SDS	Software Defined Storage
DPDK	Data Plane Development Kit
SR-IOV	Single Root I/O Virtualization
EM	Element Manager
EMS	Element Management System
VNFM	VNF Manager
VM	Virtual Machine
MANO	Management and Orchestration
VIM	Virtual Infrastructure Manager
NFVO	NFV Orchestrator
WIM	Wide Area Network Infrastructure Manager
OSS/BSS	Operations Support System/Business Support System
NSD	network services descriptor
VNFD	VNF descriptor
PoP	Point of Presence
SNMP	Simple Network Management Protocol
NETCONF	Network Configuration Protocol
3GPP	3rd Generation Partnership Project
IETF	Internet Engineering Task Force
2G	Second Generation
3G	Third Generation
EE	Energy Efficiency
UD	User Data
EC	Energy Consumed
RAN	Radio Access Network
BBU	Baseband Processing Unit
DVFS	Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling
MVNO	Mobile Virtual Network Operator
C-RAN	Cloud-RAN
SON	Self-organizing network
TWAMP	Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol
O-RAN	Open Radio Access Network
ML	Machine Learning
REST/HTTPS	Representational State Transfer/Hyper-text Transfer Protocol Secure
RSSI	Received Signal Strength Indicator
WAN	Wide Area Network
ONOS	Open Network Operating System
LSTM	Long Short-Term Memory
IBM	International Business Machines Corp
RIC	RAN Intelligent Controller
O-DU	Open Distributed Unit
O-RU	Open radio interface
O-CU	Open Central Unit
O-CU-CP	Open Central Unit Control Plane
O-CU-UP	Open Central Unit User Plane
CUPS	Control and User Plane Separation
E2AP	E2 Application Protocol
E2SM	E2 Service Model
SCTP	Stream Control Transmission Protocol
SMO	Service Management and Orchestration
RT	Real Time
KPI	Key Performance Indicator
BS	Base Station
QoS	Quality of Service