4 research outputs found
How to buy a network: Trading of resources in the physical layer
IEEE Communications Magazine, 44(12): pp. 94-102.Recently, a number of new research initiatives,
most notably UCLPv2 and GENI, have
promoted the dynamic partition of physical network
resources (infrastructure) as the means to
operate the network, and to implement new protocols
and services. This has led to a number of
open issues such as resource discovery, implementation
of resource partitioning, and the
aggregation of resources to create arbitrary network
topologies. To us, the key issue is the
design of a mechanism to trade, acquire, and
control network resources, given a choice of providers
of physical resources (infrastructure providers).
In this article we present an architecture
that allows physical resources to be traded, while
granting users controlled access to the acquired
resources via a policy enforcement mechanism.
In addition, it allows resource provider domains
to be linked via configurable, provider-neutral
resource exchange points that are the physical
resource equivalents of the pooling point, or
Internet Exchange Point (IXP). We demonstrate
how our trading system will operate by presenting
a use case in which a network topology is
constructed using resources from multiple providers,
be it Internet Service Providers (ISPs), or
National Research Experimental Network
(NREN) providers. The use case also shows how
a dynamic reconfiguration can be effected by the
customer though the use of simple access control
policies, without involving the provider