The method of any combination of examples 29-30, further comprising: periodically advertising, by each vBNG instance of the one or more vBNG instances, subscriber information to the BNG controller; receiving, by each vBNG instance of the one or more vBNG instances, load balancing credit information from the BNG controller; and determining, by each vBNG instance of the one or more vBNG instances, whether to receive the request to access service provider services based on the load balancing credit information.

The method of any combination of examples 29-31, further comprising: periodically outputting, by each vBNG instance of the one or more vBNG instances, network health information to the BNG controller.

The method of any combination of examples 29-32, further comprising: receiving, by the BNG virtual machine manager, from the BNG controller, an instruction to destroy a particular vBNG instance of the one or more vBNG instances; and destroying, by the BNG virtual machine manager, the particular vBNG instance in response to the instruction to destroy the particular vBNG instance.

The method of any combination of examples 29-33, wherein each vBNG instance of the one or more vBNG instances is further configured to: receive configuration updates from a network instance and configuration manager (NICM) of the BNG controller; exchange security related information with the NICM; receive updates from a unified network security management (UNSM) of the BNG controller; receive load balancing credit information from a network load balancer (NLB) of the BNG controller; or synchronize a local database with a network subscriber database (NSDB) of the BNG controller.