4 research outputs found
SDN based testbeds for evaluating and promoting multipath TCP
Multipath TCP is an experimental transport proto-
col with remarkable recent past and non-negligible future poten-
tial. It has been standardized recently, however the evaluation
studies focus only on a limited set of isolated use-cases and
a comprehensive analysis or a feasible path of Internet-wide
adoption is still missing. This is mostly because in the current
networking practice it is unusual to configure multiple paths
between the endpoints of a connection. Therefore, conducting and
precisely controlling multipath experiments over the real “inter-
net” is a challenging task for some experimenters and impossible
for others. In this paper, we invoke SDN technology to make
this control possible and exploit large-scale internet testbeds to
conduct end-to-end MPTCP experiments. More specifically, we
establish a special purpose control and measurement framework
on top of two distinct internet testbeds. First, using the OpenFlow
support of GÉANT, we build a testbed enabling measurements
with real traffic. Second, we design and establish a publicly
available large-scale multipath capable measurement framework
on top of PlanetLab Europe and show the challenges of such
a system. Furthermore, we present measurements results with
MPTCP in both testbeds to get insight into its behavior in such
not well explored environment
A Large-Scale Multipath Playground for Experimenters and Early Adopters
Multipath TCP is an experimental transport protocol with
remarkable recent past and non-negligible future potential.
However, the lack of available large-scale testbeds and pub-
licly accessible multiple paths grossly prohibits the adoption
of the technology. Here, we demonstrate a large-scale multi-
path playground deployed on PlanetLab Europe, which can
be used either by experimenters and researchers to test and
verify their multipath-related ideas (e.g., enhancing conges-
tion control, fairness or even the arrangement of multiple
paths) and also by early adopters to enhance their Internet
connection even if they are single-home
Enhancing Networks via Virtualized Network Functions
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2019. Major: Computer Science. Advisor: Zhi-Li Zhang. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 116 pages.In an era of ubiquitous connectivity, various new applications, network protocols, and online services (e.g., cloud services, distributed machine learning, cryptocurrency) have been constantly creating, underpinning many of our daily activities. Emerging demands for networks have led to growing traffic volume and complexity of modern networks, which heavily rely on a wide spectrum of specialized network functions (e.g., Firewall, Load Balancer) for performance, security, etc. Although (virtual) network functions (VNFs) are widely deployed in networks, they are instantiated in an uncoordinated manner failing to meet growing demands of evolving networks. In this dissertation, we argue that networks equipped with VNFs can be designed in a fashion similar to how computer software is today programmed. By following the blueprint of joint design over VNFs, networks can be made more effective and efficient. We begin by presenting Durga, a system fusing wide area network (WAN) virtualization on gateway with local area network (LAN) virtualization technology. It seamlessly aggregates multiple WAN links into a (virtual) big pipe for better utilizing WAN links and also provides fast fail-over thus minimizing application performance degradation under WAN link failures. Without the support from LAN virtualization technology, existing solutions fail to provide high reliability and performance required by today’s enterprise applications. We then study a newly standardized protocol, Multipath TCP (MPTCP), adopted in Durga, showing the challenge of associating MPTCP subflows in network for the purpose of boosting throughput and enhancing security. Instead of designing a customized solution in every VNF to conquer this common challenge (making VNFs aware of MPTCP), we implement an online service named SAMPO to be readily integrated into VNFs. Following the same principle, we make an attempt to take consensus as a service in software-defined networks. We illustrate new network failure scenarios that are not explicitly handled by existing consensus algorithms such as Raft, thereby severely affecting their correct or efficient operations. Finally, we re-consider VNFs deployed in a network from the perspective of network administrators. A global view of deployed VNFs brings new opportunities for performance optimization over the network, and thus we explore parallelism in service function chains composing a sequence of VNFs that are typically traversed in-order by data flows