  Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Network Coding (NC) have attracted
much attention in recent years as key concepts for providing 5G networks with
flexibility and differentiated reliability, respectively. In this paper, we
present the integration of NC architectural design and NFV. In order to do so
we first describe what we call a virtualization process upon our proposed
architectural design of NC that should help to offer the reliability
functionality to a network. The process consists of identifying the required
functional entities of NC and analyzing when the functionality should be
activated towards complexity/energy efficiency. The relevance of our proposed
NC function virtualization is its applicability to any underlying physical
network, satellite or hybrid thus enabling softwarization, and rapid innovative
deployment. Finally, we validate our framework to a study case of geo-control
of network reliability that is based on device's geographical location-based
signal/network information.
