An intent-based network virtualization platform for SDN

© 2016 IFIP. Currently, the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm has attracted significant interests from industry and academia as a future network architecture. SDN brings many benefits to network operations and management including programmability, agility, elasticity, and flexibility. With SDN and OpenFlow, one of the promising SDN protocols, software defined Network Virtualization (NV) techniques can be designed and implemented via flow table segmentation to provision independent virtual networks (VNs). In this paper, we propose an intent based virtual network management platform based on software defined NV. The objective of the proposed NV platform is to automate the management and configuration of virtual networks based on high level tenant requirement specifications, called intents. The design and implementation of the platform is based on ONOS, an open-source SDN controller, and OpenVirteX, a network hypervisor. The platform is designed to provide multiple VNs over the same physical infrastructure to multiple tenants

Intent-based network slicing for SDN vertical services with assurance: Context, design and preliminary experiments

Network slicing is announced to be one of the key features for 5G infrastructures enabling network operators to provide network services with the flexibility and dynamicity necessary for the vertical services, while relying on Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software-defined Networking (SDN). On the other hand, vertical industries are attracted by flexibility and customization offered by operators through network slicing, especially if slices come with in-built SDN capabilities to programmatically connect their application components and if they are relieved of dealing with detailed technicalities of the underlying (virtual) infrastructure. In this paper, we present an Intent-based deployment of a NFV orchestration stack that allows for the setup of Qos-aware and SDN-enabled network slices toward effective service chaining in the vertical domain. The main aim of the work is to simplify and automate the deployment of tenant-managed SDN-enabled network slices through a declarative approach while abstracting the underlying implementation details and unburdening verticals to deal with technology-specific low-level networking directives. In our approach, the intent-based framework we propose is based on an ETSI NFV MANO platform and is assessed through a set of experimental results demonstrating its feasibility and effectiveness

SDN Access Control for the Masses

The evolution of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has so far been predominantly geared towards defining and refining the abstractions on the forwarding and control planes. However, despite a maturing south-bound interface and a range of proposed network operating systems, the network management application layer is yet to be specified and standardized. It has currently poorly defined access control mechanisms that could be exposed to network applications. Available mechanisms allow only rudimentary control and lack procedures to partition resource access across multiple dimensions. We address this by extending the SDN north-bound interface to provide control over shared resources to key stakeholders of network infrastructure: network providers, operators and application developers. We introduce a taxonomy of SDN access models, describe a comprehensive design for SDN access control and implement the proposed solution as an extension of the ONOS network controller intent framework

Optical Network Models and their Application to Software-Defined Network Management

Software-defined networking is finding its way into optical networks. Here, it promises a simplification and unification of network management for optical networks allowing automation of operational tasks despite the highly diverse and vendor-specific commercial systems and the complexity and analog nature of optical transmission. A fundamental component for software-defined optical networking are common abstractions and interfaces. Currently, a number of models for optical networks are available. They all claim to provide open and vendor agnostic management of optical equipment. In this work, we survey and compare the most important models and propose an intent interface for creating virtual topologies that is integrated in the existing model ecosystem.Comment: Parts of the presented work has received funding from the European Commission within the H2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under grant agreeement n.645127, project ACIN