An Integrated Network Management Framework for Inter-domain Outbound Traffic Engineering

This paper proposes an integrated network management framework for inter-domain outbound traffic engineering. The framework consists of three functional blocks (monitoring, optimization and implementation) to make the outbound traffic engineering adaptive to network condition changes such as inter-domain traffic demand variation, inter-domain routing changes and link failures. The objective is to keep the inter-domain link utilization balanced under any of these changes while reducing service disruptions and reconfiguration overheads. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework can achieve better load balancing with less service disruptions and re-configuration overheads in comparison to alternative approaches

Resource virtualisation of network routers

There is now considerable interest in applications that transport time-sensitive data across the best-effort Internet. We present a novel network router architecture, which has the potential to improve the Quality of Service guarantees provided to such flows. This router architecture makes use of virtual machine techniques, to assign an individual virtual routelet to each network flow requiring QoS guarantees. We describe a prototype of this virtual routelet architecture, and evaluate its effectiveness. Experimental results of the performance and flow partitioning of this prototype, compared with a standard software router, suggest promise in the virtual routelet architecture

Empirical exploration of air traffic and human dynamics in terminal airspaces

Air traffic is widely known as a complex, task-critical techno-social system, with numerous interactions between airspace, procedures, aircraft and air traffic controllers. In order to develop and deploy high-level operational concepts and automation systems scientifically and effectively, it is essential to conduct an in-depth investigation on the intrinsic traffic-human dynamics and characteristics, which is not widely seen in the literature. To fill this gap, we propose a multi-layer network to model and analyze air traffic systems. A Route-based Airspace Network (RAN) and Flight Trajectory Network (FTN) encapsulate critical physical and operational characteristics; an Integrated Flow-Driven Network (IFDN) and Interrelated Conflict-Communication Network (ICCN) are formulated to represent air traffic flow transmissions and intervention from air traffic controllers, respectively. Furthermore, a set of analytical metrics including network variables, complex network attributes, controllers' cognitive complexity, and chaotic metrics are introduced and applied in a case study of Guangzhou terminal airspace. Empirical results show the existence of fundamental diagram and macroscopic fundamental diagram at the route, sector and terminal levels. Moreover, the dynamics and underlying mechanisms of "ATCOs-flow" interactions are revealed and interpreted by adaptive meta-cognition strategies based on network analysis of the ICCN. Finally, at the system level, chaos is identified in conflict system and human behavioral system when traffic switch to the semi-stable or congested phase. This study offers analytical tools for understanding the complex human-flow interactions at potentially a broad range of air traffic systems, and underpins future developments and automation of intelligent air traffic management systems.Comment: 30 pages, 28 figures, currently under revie

Managing Interdomain Traffic in Latin America: A New Perspective based on LISP

The characteristics of Latin American network infrastructures have global consequences, particularly in the area of interdomain traffic engineering. As an example, Latin America shows the largest de-aggregation factor of IP prefixes among all regional Internet registries, being proportionally the largest contributor to the growth and dynamics of the global BGP routing table. In this article we analyze the peculiarities of LA interdomain routing architecture, and provide up-to-date data about the combined effects of the multihoming and TE practices in the region. We observe that the Internet Research Task Force initiative on the separation of the address space into locators and identifiers can not only alleviate the growth and dynamics of the global routing table, but can also offer appealing TE opportunities for LA. We outline one of the solutions under discussion at the IRTF, the Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol, and examine its potential in terms of interdomain traffic management in the context of LA. The key advantage of LISP is its nondisruptive nature, but the existing proposals for its control plane have some problems that may hinder its possible deployment. In light of this, we introduce a promising control plane for LISP that can solve these issues, and at the same time has the potential to bridge the gap between intradomain and interdomain traffic management.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

SDN Testbed for Evaluation of Large Exo-Atmospheric EMP Attacks

Large-scale nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks and natural disasters can cause extensive network failures across wide geographic regions. Although operational networks are designed to handle most single or dual faults, recent efforts have also focused on more capable multi-failure disaster recovery schemes. Concurrently, advances in software-defined networking (SDN) technologies have delivered highly-adaptable frameworks for implementing new and improved service provisioning and recovery paradigms in real-world settings. Hence this study leverages these new innovations to develop a robust disaster recovery (counter-EMP) framework for large backbone networks. Detailed findings from an experimental testbed study are also presented

Network aware P2P multimedia streaming: capacity or locality?

P2P content providers are motivated to localize traffic within Autonomous Systems and therefore alleviate the tension with ISPs stemming from costly inter-AS traffic generated by geographically distributed P2P users. In this paper, we first present a new three-tier framework to conduct a thorough study on the impact of various capacity aware or locality aware neighbor selection and chunk scheduling strategies. Specifically, we propose a novel hybrid neighbor selection strategy with the flexibility to elect neighbors based on either type of network awareness with different probabilities. We find that network awareness in terms of both capacity and locality potentially degrades system QoS as a whole and that capacity awareness faces effort-based unfairness, but enables contribution-based fairness. Extensive simulations show that hybrid neighbor selection can not only promote traffic locality but lift streaming quality and that the crux of traffic locality promotion is active overlay construction. Based on this observation, we then propose a totally decentralized network awareness protocol, equipped with hybrid neighbor selection. In realistic simulation environments, this protocol can reduce inter-AS traffic from 95% to 38% a locality performance comparable with tracker-side strategies (35%) under the premise of high streaming quality. Our performance evaluation results provide valuable insights for both theoretical study on selfish topologies and real-deployed system design. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 2011 IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P 2011), Kyoto, Japan, 31 August-2 September 2011. In Proceedings of P2P, 2011, p. 54-6