Algorithms for advance bandwidth reservation in media production networks

Media production generally requires many geographically distributed actors (e.g., production houses, broadcasters, advertisers) to exchange huge amounts of raw video and audio data. Traditional distribution techniques, such as dedicated point-to-point optical links, are highly inefficient in terms of installation time and cost. To improve efficiency, shared media production networks that connect all involved actors over a large geographical area, are currently being deployed. The traffic in such networks is often predictable, as the timing and bandwidth requirements of data transfers are generally known hours or even days in advance. As such, the use of advance bandwidth reservation (AR) can greatly increase resource utilization and cost efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Integer Linear Programming formulation of the bandwidth scheduling problem, which takes into account the specific characteristics of media production networks, is presented. Two novel optimization algorithms based on this model are thoroughly evaluated and compared by means of in-depth simulation results

On the Fly Orchestration of Unikernels: Tuning and Performance Evaluation of Virtual Infrastructure Managers

Network operators are facing significant challenges meeting the demand for more bandwidth, agile infrastructures, innovative services, while keeping costs low. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud Computing are emerging as key trends of 5G network architectures, providing flexibility, fast instantiation times, support of Commercial Off The Shelf hardware and significant cost savings. NFV leverages Cloud Computing principles to move the data-plane network functions from expensive, closed and proprietary hardware to the so-called Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). In this paper we deal with the management of virtual computing resources (Unikernels) for the execution of VNFs. This functionality is performed by the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) in the NFV MANagement and Orchestration (MANO) reference architecture. We discuss the instantiation process of virtual resources and propose a generic reference model, starting from the analysis of three open source VIMs, namely OpenStack, Nomad and OpenVIM. We improve the aforementioned VIMs introducing the support for special-purpose Unikernels and aiming at reducing the duration of the instantiation process. We evaluate some performance aspects of the VIMs, considering both stock and tuned versions. The VIM extensions and performance evaluation tools are available under a liberal open source licence

Network Function Virtualization: state-of-the-art and research challenges

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has drawn significant attention from both industry and academia as an important shift in telecommunication service provisioning. By decoupling Network Functions (NFs) from the physical devices on which they run, NFV has the potential to lead to significant reductions in Operating Expenses (OPEX) and Capital Expenses (CAPEX) and facilitate the deployment of new services with increased agility and faster time-to-value. The NFV paradigm is still in its infancy and there is a large spectrum of opportunities for the research community to develop new architectures, systems and applications, and to evaluate alternatives and trade-offs in developing technologies for its successful deployment. In this paper, after discussing NFV and its relationship with complementary fields of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and cloud computing, we survey the state-of-the-art in NFV, and identify promising research directions in this area. We also overview key NFV projects, standardization efforts, early implementations, use cases and commercial products.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Robust Optimization Based Energy-Aware Virtual Network Function Placement Proposal for Small Cell 5G Networks with Mobile Edge Computing Capabilities

In the context of cloud-enabled 5G radio access networks with network function virtualization capabilities, we focus on the virtual network function placement problem for a multitenant cluster of small cells that provide mobile edge computing services. Under an emerging distributed network architecture and hardware infrastructure, we employ cloud-enabled small cells that integrate microservers for virtualization execution, equipped with additional hardware appliances. We develop an energy-aware placement solution using a robust optimization approach based on service demand uncertainty in order to minimize the power consumption in the system constrained by network service latency requirements and infrastructure terms. Then, we discuss the results of the proposed placement mechanism in 5G scenarios that combine several service flavours and robust protection values. Once the impact of the service flavour and robust protection on the global power consumption of the system is analyzed, numerical results indicate that our proposal succeeds in efficiently placing the virtual network functions that compose the network services in the available hardware infrastructure while fulfilling service constraints.The research leading to these results has been supported by the EU funded H2020 5G-PPP Project SESAME (Grant Agreement 671596) and the Spanish MINECO Project 5GRANVIR (TEC2016-80090-C2-2-R)

Modelling the power consumption and trade-offs of virtualised cloud radio access networks

In large-scale computing centres, the advancement of knowledge in regards to the predicted power consumption (PC) and concerns of host servers that run virtual machines (VMs) could improve the capacity planning and networks’ Energy Efficiency (EE). In this paper, a parameterised power model is proposed to explore the individual components within the virtualisation based cloud-radio access network (vC-RAN). The model evaluates the PC and trade-offs of a server undergoing virtualisation. After, cooling and total PC for C-RAN architecture with and without virtualisation have been compared using differentiated parameters, such as varying number of bare-metal base band units (BBUs), VMs and system’s resource blocks (RBs) share/bandwidth. The results show dramatic decrease in the total PC via virtualising the core network (CN). In addition, the degraded performance of each virtualised server is demonstrated via modelling the execution time and overhead costs. These costs have been resulted from increasing the number of hosted VMs and utilised RBs by each VM

Construindo sistemas distribuídos tolerantes a falhas e eficientes em redes SDN com NFV

Orientador : Elias P. Duarte Jr.Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Exatas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Informática. Defesa: Curitiba, 15/08/2017Inclui referências : f. 111-117Resumo: Os sistemas de virtualização estão mudando a maneira de projetar e operar as redes de computadores. A Virtualização de Funções de Rede (NFV - Network Function Virtualization) é uma tecnologia emergente que implementa, utilizando técnicas de virtualização, funções de rede tradicionalmente fornecidas em dispositivos de hardware específicos. O presente trabalho tem por objetivo tirar proveito destas novas tecnologias para implementar, dentro da própria rede, componentes clássicos para a construção de sistemas tolerantes a falhas. A primeira parte do trabalho descreve implementações de serviços de detecção de falhas. A função virtualizada de rede NFV-FD (FD - Failure Detector) é executada em uma rede SDN (Software Defined Network), utilizando informações disponibilizadas por um controlador e por switches para monitorar o estado de processos e enlaces de comunicação. A NFV-FD foi implementada e seus benefícios são apresentados através de experimentos reportados no trabalho. Foi também implementado um serviço para detecção de falhas para a Internet (IFDS - Internet Failure Detection Service), que pode ser configurado de acordo com as necessidades de QoS (Quality of Service) das aplicações. Em particular, são propostas estratégias que permitem a configuração do IFDS tendo em vista os requisitos de múltiplas aplicações. O IFDS é composto por uma MIB (Management Information Base) SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) denominada f dMIB. Um protótipo do serviço foi implementado e resultados experimentais são apresentados, obtidos tanto em redes locais como na Internet. Outra contribuição desta tese relacionada aos detectores de falhas trata da questão do cômputo do timeout, sendo proposta uma estratégia denominada tuning_ que reajusta o valor do timeout de acordo com os tempos de comunicação observados. Nos experimentos, tuning_ apresentou um excelente desempenho, reduzindo de forma expressiva o número de falsas suspeitas. Em outra contribuição tratamos do problema da sincronização consistente entre múltiplos controladores SDN. Uma função virtualizada de rede denominada de VNF-Consensus, é proposta para garantir a sincronização consistente entre os controladores envolvidos. VNF-Consensus implementa o algoritmo de consenso Paxos e com sua utilização os controladores ficam desacoplados da sincronização. Os experimentos mostraram que utilizando a VNF-Consensus, o plano de controle é sincronizado sem aumentar a carga de trabalho nos controladores. Por último, propomos AnyBone, uma NFV que oferece as primitivas de difusão confiável para garantir a entrega ordenada das mensagens transmitidas na rede. O AnyBone é baseado em um sequenciador que gerencia as transmissões e entrega as mensagens ordenadas aos processos, além de oferecer uma API para as aplicações trocarem mensagens utilizando as primitivas de difusão atômica e confiável. Os resultados experimentais demonstram a eficiência da estratégia proposta, bem como seu custo, em termos da latência da difusão em diferentes cenários, ou seja, variando o número de participantes e o tamanho das mensagens transmitidas. O conjunto de contribuições desta tese permite concluir que é viável utilizar a própria rede para implementar com eficiência componentes clássicos de tolerância a falhas que podem ser disponibilizados como serviços para aplicações distribuídas diversas. Palavras-chave: Função Virtualizada de Rede, Tolerância a Falhas, Sistemas Distribuídos, Redes Definidas por Software.Abstract: Virtualization systems are changing the way networks are designed and deployed. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is an emerging technology that employs virtualization to transform network devices into virtual entities. In this thesis, we take advantage of this technology to implement classical distributed systems abstractions within the network. As a result, we aim to be able to build efficient fault-tolerant distributed applications. Initially, we describe implementations of failure detectors. A virtual network function called NFV-FD (FD stands for - Failure Detector) is implemented in a Software Defined Network (SDN) and uses information obtained from a SDN controller to monitor processes and determine their state. In addition, NFV-FD also provides information about the state of communication links. NFV-FD was implemented and experimental results are reported. We also implemented an Internet Failure Detection Service (IFDS), which can be used to provide the Quality of Service (QoS) level required by the applications. In particular, we proposed two strategies to configure IFDS when multiple processes are monitored with diferent QoS requirements. IFDS was implemented with SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). We have implemented a prototype of the service and experimental results are presented running both on a single LAN and on the Internet. Another contribution of this thesis also related to failure detectors addresses the question of how to compute a precise timeout interval. We propose the tuning strategy that dynamically adjusts the timeout interval in a way that better reflects a varying behavior of the communication channel. Experimental results obtained from running tuning show that the strategy reduces significantly the number of false detections. The next contribution of the thesis refers to achieving consistent synchronization across multiple SDN controllers. In order to ensure consistent synchronization among controllers of a SDN distributed control plane, we propose the virtual network function VNF-Consensus. VNF-Consensus implements the Paxos consensus algorithm so that controllers are decoupled from synchronization tasks. Experimental results show that our solution is able to guarantee a consistent control plane without increasing the number of tasks a controller has to execute. Finally, we propose AnyBone, a VNF that others reliable and atomic broadcast primitives, which ensures that messages are delivered by all the processes and in the same total order. AnyBone relies on a sequencer to manage the transmissions and enforce the order. Furthermore, AnyBone provides an API for applications to be able to employ atomic and reliable broadcast primitives. Experimental results show that AnyBone provides an efficient strategy to ensure the ordered message delivery to all processes. We measured the broadcast latency in diferent scenarios, i. e., increasing the number of processes involved in the communication and also the size of the transmitted messages. By taking into account the results of the contributions of this thesis, we can conclude that it is not only feasible, but also efficient to use the network itself in order to deploy classic fault tolerance abstractions which can be used to build fault-tolerant distributed applications. Keywords: Network Function Virtualization, Fault Tolerance, Distributed Systems, Software Defined Networking

Analyses and design of a new integrated mobile SIP proxy to enhance the scalability in mobile network operators

The emergence of the two new technologies, namely Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have radically changed the development of computer network fun etions and the evolution of mobile network operators (MN Os) infrastructures. The se two technologies bring to MN Os the promises of reducing costs, enhancing network flexibility and scalability to handle the growth in the number of mobile users and the need to extend its coverage to rural areas. The aim of this thesis 1s to exploit the advantages of the NFV concept to support the implementation of full y integrated solution with an external Session Initial Protocol (SIP) proxy application to enhance the scalability in MN Os. The proposed solution offers a hosted SIP proxy application installed on a virtual machine (VM) environment. The SIP proxy provides full Private Branch Exchange (PBX) and Switch (SW) functionality with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capabilities. It maximizes the capacity in the existing servers and value-added services (VAS) data centers within the MNOs. The proposed solution enhances the usage of the existing bandwidth by using the unlicensed radio frequency (RF) spectrum bandwidth instead of the licensed RF spectrum to support a larger number of smartphones and data plans. In the initial experimental testbed, TeleFinity IP PBX, which is an external SIP proxy, 1s deployed on a virtual platform and integrated with the mobile network. The integration 1s realized by establishing a point to point protocol (PPP) SIP trunk connection between TeleFinity IP PBX and the Gateway Mobile Switch Center (GMSC). Severa! Testing scenarios were carried out over a local area network (LAN) and a wide area network (W AN) using different voice codees: G.711 u-law, G. 723, and G. 729 to validate the voice cali quality offered by the proposed solution. The Network analyzer software solutions: 1) Startrinity SIP tester, 2) Commview and 3) Resource Monitor are used to measure severa! Quality of Service (QoS) metrics. These include voice jitter, delay, packet Joss, and MOS. This procedure ensures that the proposed solution can handle voice communications with acceptable quality compared to LTE standards