 The service provider network is connected to the consumer or the consumer network through the user to network interface consumer UNIC in This module we are going to look at how the consumer could possibly have access to the service providers infrastructure and program it to avail some deal or some package Like service provider provides a software as a service Utility or a feature as in a firewall that possibly customer could program and Provide to its own user base So let's look at the requirement of it and the overall framework for it the consumers could be Retail or consumers could be service providers in turn as well so the variation in programming Skills or the dexterity dexterity expectations is quite varied So we can imagine that there are some Turnkey services as Softwares which are provided to the customers by the service provider with some reconfigurability and reprogrammability provisioned to the customer the programmability would now be limited to configuration options like adjusting the values of certain Fields visible through a web-based interface the consumer could subscribe to the service provider for instance a service Of a firewall the service provider deploys now the firewall within its own infrastructure but the front-end or the API is provisioned to the consumer or the Customer base of the consumer All the traffic that is coming from consumer devices or the consumer network is now Routed through that is to and from the Service providers infrastructure Primarily through the firewall that the service provider has set up for the consumer Let's look at the Complete details of it the description is itself clear that the consumer Subscribes to an offer by a service provider for a firewall The firewall capability is only installed within the infrastructure of the service provider and The service provider only offers a limited configuration or editable parameters to the customer For instance opening and closing pinholes That is changing the port ports or changing the Applications which could be provided access to the through the firewall What happens in a more traditional approaches that? Traditional firewalls are deployed as stand-in-own elements and these are integrated into the customer premises equipment like Gateways or routers or wireless access points the Configuration of traditional firewalls is is a one-time affair and it only is updated through service patches It's it's difficult and it requires a specialized knowledge by the networking experts so the configuration actually would Allow the users to have Control over certain parameters, but would not have programmatic access to certain underlying features or more technically advanced options in programmability approach the Consumer possibly is now limited to configurable parameters To meet the market expectations While also allowing some add-ons the programmability could be achieved by Providing a web-based interface with tailored or customized access to Certain firewall features the network programmability would involve the modification of The Operator infrastructure, so this is essentially a firewall a virtual network function Infrastructure as a service in the more traditional network function virtualization context because it's all happening in the cloud The firewall could also be now deployed by the operator With some high-end hardware capability because the traffic is now going to be routed through the flow Which are determined by the service provider for the particular consumer the challenge that we are going to expect here Is not going to be much different from what we have seen earlier in offering services across Service providers infrastructure from the enterprise angle angle even from within the infrastructure of the operator So we can say that the firewall service could be applied To all of the consumer services each consumer service could possibly have its own Policy requirement this could lead to some more complexity, but this complex complexity essentially is on the service provider's end so We are going to look at the advantages that we are going to get the first and foremost is the availability of a Software utility that allows the customer to have the firewall capability rather than deploying its own Infrastructure involving the capital and the operating cost that's the first then The experience of the service provider in handling security essentially means that they have a more Systematic operational procedure and a more thorough outlook on how security threats are handled and managed Then if the firewall is deployed by the operator as a software application It means that the software could be changed could be modified and then All the Resources which are required are on the service providers end So when users move to their workplaces and they access the consumer network or Consumer infrastructure, they have to go through the firewall as an application. This actually means that The same cloud based the operator based infrastructure is now available To the consumer because the consumer is programmed at once for its own customer base whether they are at their offices or they are at home and then over time upgraded security profiles and At more advanced billing options and More scalable solutions could be provided as new service patches come in these software as a service features like Firewall the reference is essentially the same operational opportunities and challenges of SDN and network function virtualization programmable infrastructure by the at is the Alliance for telecommunication in industry solutions