Dataplane Specialization for High-performance OpenFlow Software Switching

OpenFlow is an amazingly expressive dataplane program- ming language, but this expressiveness comes at a severe performance price as switches must do excessive packet clas- sification in the fast path. The prevalent OpenFlow software switch architecture is therefore built on flow caching, but this imposes intricate limitations on the workloads that can be supported efficiently and may even open the door to mali- cious cache overflow attacks. In this paper we argue that in- stead of enforcing the same universal flow cache semantics to all OpenFlow applications and optimize for the common case, a switch should rather automatically specialize its dat- aplane piecemeal with respect to the configured workload. We introduce ES WITCH , a novel switch architecture that uses on-the-fly template-based code generation to compile any OpenFlow pipeline into efficient machine code, which can then be readily used as fast path. We present a proof- of-concept prototype and we demonstrate on illustrative use cases that ES WITCH yields a simpler architecture, superior packet processing speed, improved latency and CPU scala- bility, and predictable performance. Our prototype can eas- ily scale beyond 100 Gbps on a single Intel blade even with complex OpenFlow pipelines

Residential wireless interfaces virtualization: a feasibility study

This paper investigates the possibility of virtualizing and distributing the functionality that runs on top of residential wireless communications. Specifically, we propose, describe and test a solution that transports USB communications to remote locations, for scenarios in which the in-home wireless interfaces are consumed at the server side through this type of general-purpose and widely used interfaces. We frame this study in a general architecture by which Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) bring economies of scale, flexibility and programmability to residential Internet of Things (IoT) environments. As a result of our tests, we prove the feasibility of the remote presence of the IoT systems through the Universal Serial Bus (USB) tunnels, and we obtain approximate bandwidth measurements that serve as a hint on the type of services that can be offloaded to the cloud. For those functionalities that would need more bandwidth, we propose to embed a lightweight virtualization environment in home and to execute in it part of the virtualized components, something that is in line with the recent fog computing approaches

A Software-Defined Solution for Managing Fog Computing Resources in Sensor Networks

The fast growth of Internet-connected embedded devices demands for new capabilities at the network edge. These new capabilities are local processing, fast communications, and resource virtualization. The current work aims to address the previous capabilities by designing and deploying a new proposal, which offers on-demand activation of offline IoT fog computing assets via a Software Defined Networking (SDN) based solution combined with containerization and sensor virtualization. We present and discuss performance and functional outcomes from emulated tests made on our proposal. Analysing the performance results, the system latency has two parts. The first part is about the delay induced by limitations on the networking resources. The second part of the system latency is due to the on-demand activation of the required processing resources, which are initially powered off towards a more sustainable system operation. In addition, analysing the functional results, when a real IoT protocol is used, we evidence our proposal viability to be deployed with the necessary orchestration in distributed scenarios involving embedded devices, actuators, controllers, and brokers at the network edge.Comment: 8 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables, 16 reference

Toward Open and Programmable Wireless Network Edge

Increasingly, the last hop connecting users to their enterprise and home networks is wireless. Wireless is becoming ubiquitous not only in homes and enterprises but in public venues such as coffee shops, hospitals, and airports. However, most of the publicly and privately available wireless networks are proprietary and closed in operation. Also, there is little effort from industries to move forward on a path to greater openness for the requirement of innovation. Therefore, we believe it is the domain of university researchers to enable innovation through openness. In this thesis work, we introduce and defines the importance of open framework in addressing the complexity of the wireless network. The Software Defined Network (SDN) framework has emerged as a popular solution for the data center network. However, the promise of the SDN framework is to make the network open, flexible and programmable. In order to deliver on the promise, SDN must work for all users and across all networks, both wired and wireless. Therefore, we proposed to create new modules and APIs to extend the standard SDN framework all the way to the end-devices (i.e., mobile devices, APs). Thus, we want to provide an extensible and programmable abstraction of the wireless network as part of the current SDN-based solution. In this thesis work, we design and develop a framework, weSDN (wireless extension of SDN), that extends the SDN control capability all the way to the end devices to support client-network interaction capabilities and new services. weSDN enables the control-plane of wireless networks to be extended to mobile devices and allows for top-level decisions to be made from an SDN controller with knowledge of the network as a whole, rather than device centric configurations. In addition, weSDN easily obtains user application information, as well as the ability to monitor and control application flows dynamically. Based on the weSDN framework, we demonstrate new services such as application-aware traffic management, WLAN virtualization, and security management

Design and implementation of the OFELIA FP7 facility: The European OpenFlow testbed

The growth of the Internet in terms of number of devices, the number of networks associated to each device and the mobility of devices and users makes the operation and management of the Internet network infrastructure a very complex challenge. In order to address this challenge, innovative solutions and ideas must be tested and evaluated in real network environments and not only based on simulations or laboratory setups. OFELIA is an European FP7 project and its main objective is to address the aforementioned challenge by building and operating a multi-layer, multi-technology and geographically distributed Future Internet testbed facility, where the network itself is precisely controlled and programmed by the experimenter using the emerging OpenFlow technology. This paper reports on the work done during the first half of the project, the lessons learned as well as the key advantages of the OFELIA facility for developing and testing new networking ideas. An overview on the challenges that have been faced on the design and implementation of the testbed facility is described, including the OFELIA Control Framework testbed management software. In addition, early operational experience of the facility since it was opened to the general public, providing five different testbeds or islands, is described

Quality of Service in Software Defined Networking

Software Defined Networking SDN promises to provide a powerful way to introduce Quality of Service QoS concepts in today s communication networks SDN programmatically modifies the functionality and behavior of network devices using single high level program Software Defined Networking SDN instantiation OpenFlow has been designed according to these properties The realization of Quality of Service QoS concepts becomes possible in a flexible and dynamic manner with SDN This paper focuses on the existing architectures parameter such as response time switch capacity and bandwidth isolation that is calculated here Although concepts of QoS are well researched they were not realized in communication networks due to high implementation complexity and realization costs OpenFlow as the best-known SDN standard so far defines a standard protocol for network control These observations of switch variety may provide SDN application developer s insights when realizing QoS concepts in an SDN-based networ

User-Centric Traffic Engineering in Software Defined Networks

Software defined networking (SDN) is a relatively new paradigm that decouples individual network elements from the control logic, offering real-time network programmability, translating high level policy abstractions into low level device configurations. The framework comprises of the data (forwarding) plane incorporating network devices, while the control logic and network services reside in the control and application planes respectively. Operators can optimize the network fabric to yield performance gains for individual applications and services utilizing flow metering and application-awareness, the default traffic management method in SDN. Existing approaches to traffic optimization, however, do not explicitly consider user application trends. Recent SDN traffic engineering designs either offer improvements for typical time-critical applications or focus on devising monitoring solutions aimed at measuring performance metrics of the respective services. The performance caveats of isolated service differentiation on the end users may be substantial considering the growth in Internet and network applications on offer and the resulting diversity in user activities. Application-level flow metering schemes therefore, fall short of fully exploiting the real-time network provisioning capability offered by SDN instead relying on rather static traffic control primitives frequent in legacy networking. For individual users, SDN may lead to substantial improvements if the framework allows operators to allocate resources while accounting for a user-centric mix of applications. This thesis explores the user traffic application trends in different network environments and proposes a novel user traffic profiling framework to aid the SDN control plane (controller) in accurately configuring network elements for a broad spectrum of users without impeding specific application requirements. This thesis starts with a critical review of existing traffic engineering solutions in SDN and highlights recent and ongoing work in network optimization studies. Predominant existing segregated application policy based controls in SDN do not consider the cost of isolated application gains on parallel SDN services and resulting consequence for users having varying application usage. Therefore, attention is given to investigating techniques which may capture the user behaviour for possible integration in SDN traffic controls. To this end, profiling of user application traffic trends is identified as a technique which may offer insight into the inherent diversity in user activities and offer possible incorporation in SDN based traffic engineering. A series of subsequent user traffic profiling studies are carried out in this regard employing network flow statistics collected from residential and enterprise network environments. Utilizing machine learning techniques including the prominent unsupervised k-means cluster analysis, user generated traffic flows are cluster analysed and the derived profiles in each networking environment are benchmarked for stability before integration in SDN control solutions. In parallel, a novel flow-based traffic classifier is designed to yield high accuracy in identifying user application flows and the traffic profiling mechanism is automated. The core functions of the novel user-centric traffic engineering solution are validated by the implementation of traffic profiling based SDN network control applications in residential, data center and campus based SDN environments. A series of simulations highlighting varying traffic conditions and profile based policy controls are designed and evaluated in each network setting using the traffic profiles derived from realistic environments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the traffic management solution. The overall network performance metrics per profile show substantive gains, proportional to operator defined user profile prioritization policies despite high traffic load conditions. The proposed user-centric SDN traffic engineering framework therefore, dynamically provisions data plane resources among different user traffic classes (profiles), capturing user behaviour to define and implement network policy controls, going beyond isolated application management