5,615 research outputs found
A Survey on the Contributions of Software-Defined Networking to Traffic Engineering
Since the appearance of OpenFlow back in 2008, software-defined networking (SDN) has gained momentum. Although there are some discrepancies between the standards developing organizations working with SDN about what SDN is and how it is defined, they all outline traffic engineering (TE) as a key application. One of the most common objectives of TE is the congestion minimization, where techniques such as traffic splitting among multiple paths or advanced reservation systems are used. In such a scenario, this manuscript surveys the role of a comprehensive list of SDN protocols in TE solutions, in order to assess how these protocols can benefit TE. The SDN protocols have been categorized using the SDN architecture proposed by the open networking foundation, which differentiates among data-controller plane interfaces, application-controller plane interfaces, and management interfaces, in order to state how the interface type in which they operate influences TE. In addition, the impact of the SDN protocols on TE has been evaluated by comparing them with the path computation element (PCE)-based architecture. The PCE-based architecture has been selected to measure the impact of SDN on TE because it is the most novel TE architecture until the date, and because it already defines a set of metrics to measure the performance of TE solutions. We conclude that using the three types of interfaces simultaneously will result in more powerful and enhanced TE solutions, since they benefit TE in complementary ways.European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GN4) under Grant 691567
Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under the Secure Deployment of Services Over SDN and NFV-based Networks Project S&NSEC under Grant TEC2013-47960-C4-3-
Datacenter Traffic Control: Understanding Techniques and Trade-offs
Datacenters provide cost-effective and flexible access to scalable compute
and storage resources necessary for today's cloud computing needs. A typical
datacenter is made up of thousands of servers connected with a large network
and usually managed by one operator. To provide quality access to the variety
of applications and services hosted on datacenters and maximize performance, it
deems necessary to use datacenter networks effectively and efficiently.
Datacenter traffic is often a mix of several classes with different priorities
and requirements. This includes user-generated interactive traffic, traffic
with deadlines, and long-running traffic. To this end, custom transport
protocols and traffic management techniques have been developed to improve
datacenter network performance.
In this tutorial paper, we review the general architecture of datacenter
networks, various topologies proposed for them, their traffic properties,
general traffic control challenges in datacenters and general traffic control
objectives. The purpose of this paper is to bring out the important
characteristics of traffic control in datacenters and not to survey all
existing solutions (as it is virtually impossible due to massive body of
existing research). We hope to provide readers with a wide range of options and
factors while considering a variety of traffic control mechanisms. We discuss
various characteristics of datacenter traffic control including management
schemes, transmission control, traffic shaping, prioritization, load balancing,
multipathing, and traffic scheduling. Next, we point to several open challenges
as well as new and interesting networking paradigms. At the end of this paper,
we briefly review inter-datacenter networks that connect geographically
dispersed datacenters which have been receiving increasing attention recently
and pose interesting and novel research problems.Comment: Accepted for Publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial
Evolution towards Smart Optical Networking: Where Artificial Intelligence (AI) meets the World of Photonics
Smart optical networks are the next evolution of programmable networking and
programmable automation of optical networks, with human-in-the-loop network
control and management. The paper discusses this evolution and the role of
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Middleware for managing a large, heterogeneous programmable network
The links between BTexact Technologies and the Department of Computing Science at University College London are becomingincreasingly beneficial for the development of the middleware area for the management of programmable networks. This paperdescribes the work that has been done to date, and outlines the plans for future research
Fixed-Mobile Convergence in the 5G era: From Hybrid Access to Converged Core
The availability of different paths to communicate to a user or device
introduces several benefits, from boosting enduser performance to improving
network utilization. Hybrid access is a first step in enabling convergence of
mobile and fixed networks, however, despite traffic optimization, this approach
is limited as fixed and mobile are still two separate core networks
inter-connected through an aggregation point. On the road to 5G networks, the
design trend is moving towards an aggregated network, where different access
technologies share a common anchor point in the core. This enables further
network optimization in addition to hybrid access, examples are userspecific
policies for aggregation and improved traffic balancing across different
accesses according to user, network, and service context. This paper aims to
discuss the ongoing work around hybrid access and network convergence by
Broadband Forum and 3GPP. We present some testbed results on hybrid access and
analyze some primary performance indicators such as achievable data rates, link
utilization for aggregated traffic and session setup latency. We finally
discuss the future directions for network convergence to enable future
scenarios with enhanced configuration capabilities for fixed and mobile
convergence.Comment: to appear in IEEE Networ
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