Service Orchestrator in Cloud RAN based Edge Cloud

International audienceFifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is designed to introduce a multitude of new services which require higher processing resources and lower latency. Cloud Radio Access Network (Cloud RAN) is one of the most promising solutions for next generation networks. The basic idea of C-RAN is to migrate Baseband Units (BBU) to the cloud for a centralized processing and management. In our work, we propose to extend C-RAN architecture with an edge cloud: the Cloud RRH in order to enhance the quality of service (QoS). In this paper we propose a service orchestrator in the Cloud RAN based edge cloud in order to enhance resources utilization while keeping a good QoS

NFV Platforms: Taxonomy, Design Choices and Future Challenges

Due to the intrinsically inefficient service provisioning in traditional networks, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) keeps gaining attention from both industry and academia. By replacing the purpose-built, expensive, proprietary network equipment with software network functions consolidated on commodity hardware, NFV envisions a shift towards a more agile and open service provisioning paradigm. During the last few years, a large number of NFV platforms have been implemented in production environments that typically face critical challenges, including the development, deployment, and management of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). Nonetheless, just like any complex system, such platforms commonly consist of abounding software and hardware components and usually incorporate disparate design choices based on distinct motivations or use cases. This broad collection of convoluted alternatives makes it extremely arduous for network operators to make proper choices. Although numerous efforts have been devoted to investigating different aspects of NFV, none of them specifically focused on NFV platforms or attempted to explore their design space. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on the NFV platform design. Our study solely targets existing NFV platform implementations. We begin with a top-down architectural view of the standard reference NFV platform and present our taxonomy of existing NFV platforms based on what features they provide in terms of a typical network function life cycle. Then we thoroughly explore the design space and elaborate on the implementation choices each platform opts for. We also envision future challenges for NFV platform design in the incoming 5G era. We believe that our study gives a detailed guideline for network operators or service providers to choose the most appropriate NFV platform based on their respective requirements. Our work also provides guidelines for implementing new NFV platforms

Deliverable JRA1.1: Evaluation of current network control and management planes for multi-domain network infrastructure

This deliverable includes a compilation and evaluation of available control and management architectures and protocols applicable to a multilayer infrastructure in a multi-domain Virtual Network environment.The scope of this deliverable is mainly focused on the virtualisation of the resources within a network and at processing nodes. The virtualization of the FEDERICA infrastructure allows the provisioning of its available resources to users by means of FEDERICA slices. A slice is seen by the user as a real physical network under his/her domain, however it maps to a logical partition (a virtual instance) of the physical FEDERICA resources. A slice is built to exhibit to the highest degree all the principles applicable to a physical network (isolation, reproducibility, manageability, ...). Currently, there are no standard definitions available for network virtualization or its associated architectures. Therefore, this deliverable proposes the Virtual Network layer architecture and evaluates a set of Management- and Control Planes that can be used for the partitioning and virtualization of the FEDERICA network resources. This evaluation has been performed taking into account an initial set of FEDERICA requirements; a possible extension of the selected tools will be evaluated in future deliverables. The studies described in this deliverable define the virtual architecture of the FEDERICA infrastructure. During this activity, the need has been recognised to establish a new set of basic definitions (taxonomy) for the building blocks that compose the so-called slice, i.e. the virtual network instantiation (which is virtual with regard to the abstracted view made of the building blocks of the FEDERICA infrastructure) and its architectural plane representation. These definitions will be established as a common nomenclature for the FEDERICA project. Other important aspects when defining a new architecture are the user requirements. It is crucial that the resulting architecture fits the demands that users may have. Since this deliverable has been produced at the same time as the contact process with users, made by the project activities related to the Use Case definitions, JRA1 has proposed a set of basic Use Cases to be considered as starting point for its internal studies. When researchers want to experiment with their developments, they need not only network resources on their slices, but also a slice of the processing resources. These processing slice resources are understood as virtual machine instances that users can use to make them behave as software routers or end nodes, on which to download the software protocols or applications they have produced and want to assess in a realistic environment. Hence, this deliverable also studies the APIs of several virtual machine management software products in order to identify which best suits FEDERICA’s needs.Postprint (published version

Network Traffic Measurements, Applications to Internet Services and Security

The Internet has become along the years a pervasive network interconnecting billions of users and is now playing the role of collector for a multitude of tasks, ranging from professional activities to personal interactions. From a technical standpoint, novel architectures, e.g., cloud-based services and content delivery networks, innovative devices, e.g., smartphones and connected wearables, and security threats, e.g., DDoS attacks, are posing new challenges in understanding network dynamics. In such complex scenario, network measurements play a central role to guide traffic management, improve network design, and evaluate application requirements. In addition, increasing importance is devoted to the quality of experience provided to final users, which requires thorough investigations on both the transport network and the design of Internet services. In this thesis, we stress the importance of users’ centrality by focusing on the traffic they exchange with the network. To do so, we design methodologies complementing passive and active measurements, as well as post-processing techniques belonging to the machine learning and statistics domains. Traffic exchanged by Internet users can be classified in three macro-groups: (i) Outbound, produced by users’ devices and pushed to the network; (ii) unsolicited, part of malicious attacks threatening users’ security; and (iii) inbound, directed to users’ devices and retrieved from remote servers. For each of the above categories, we address specific research topics consisting in the benchmarking of personal cloud storage services, the automatic identification of Internet threats, and the assessment of quality of experience in the Web domain, respectively. Results comprise several contributions in the scope of each research topic. In short, they shed light on (i) the interplay among design choices of cloud storage services, which severely impact the performance provided to end users; (ii) the feasibility of designing a general purpose classifier to detect malicious attacks, without chasing threat specificities; and (iii) the relevance of appropriate means to evaluate the perceived quality of Web pages delivery, strengthening the need of users’ feedbacks for a factual assessment

Leveraging Cloud-based NFV and SDN Platform Towards Quality-Driven Next-Generation Mobile Networks

Network virtualization has become a key approach for Network Service Providers (NSPs) to mitigate the challenge of the continually increasing demands for network services. Tightly coupled with their software components, legacy network devices are difficult to upgrade or modify to meet the dynamically changing end-user needs. To virtualize their infrastructure and mitigate those challenges, NSPs have started to adopt Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). To this end, this thesis addresses the challenges faced on the road of transforming the legacy networking infrastructure to a more dynamic and agile virtualized environment to meet the rapidly increasing demand for network services and serve as an enabler for key emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G networking. The thesis considers different approaches and platforms to serve as an NFV/SDN based cloud applications while closely considering how such an environment deploys its virtualized services to optimize the network and reducing their costs. The thesis starts first by defining the standards of adopting microservices as architecture for NFV. Then, it focuses on the latency-aware deployment approach of virtual network functions (VNFs) forming service function chains (SFC) in a cloud environment. This approach ensures that NSPs still meet their strict quality of service and service level agreements while considering both functional and non-functional constraints of the NFV-based applications such as, delay, resource allocation, and intercorrelation between VNF instances. In addition, the thesis proposes a detailed approach on recovering and handling of those instances by optimizing the decision of migrating or re-instantiating the virtualized services upon a sudden event (failure/overload…). All the proposed approaches contribute to the orchestration of NFV applications to meet the requirements of the IoT and NGNs era

Distributed services across the network from edge to core

The current internet architecture is evolving from a simple carrier of bits to a platform able to provide multiple complex services running across the entire Network Service Provider (NSP) infrastructure. This calls for increased flexibility in resource management and allocation to provide dedicated, on-demand network services, leveraging a distributed infrastructure consisting of heterogeneous devices. More specifically, NSPs rely on a plethora of low-cost Customer Premise Equipment (CPE), as well as more powerful appliances at the edge of the network and in dedicated data-centers. Currently a great research effort is spent to provide this flexibility through Fog computing, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and data plane programmability. Fog computing or Edge computing extends the compute and storage capabilities to the edge of the network, closer to the rapidly growing number of connected devices and applications that consume cloud services and generate massive amounts of data. A complementary technology is NFV, a network architecture concept targeting the execution of software Network Functions (NFs) in isolated Virtual Machines (VMs), potentially sharing a pool of general-purpose hosts, rather than running on dedicated hardware (i.e., appliances). Such a solution enables virtual network appliances (i.e., VMs executing network functions) to be provisioned, allocated a different amount of resources, and possibly moved across data centers in little time, which is key in ensuring that the network can keep up with the flexibility in the provisioning and deployment of virtual hosts in today’s virtualized data centers. Moreover, recent advances in networking hardware have introduced new programmable network devices that can efficiently execute complex operations at line rate. As a result, NFs can be (partially or entirely) folded into the network, speeding up the execution of distributed services. The work described in this Ph.D. thesis aims at showing how various network services can be deployed throughout the NSP infrastructure, accommodating to the different hardware capabilities of various appliances, by applying and extending the above-mentioned solutions. First, we consider a data center environment and the deployment of (virtualized) NFs. In this scenario, we introduce a novel methodology for the modelization of different NFs aimed at estimating their performance on different execution platforms. Moreover, we propose to extend the traditional NFV deployment outside of the data center to leverage the entire NSP infrastructure. This can be achieved by integrating native NFs, commonly available in low-cost CPEs, with an existing NFV framework. This facilitates the provision of services that require NFs close to the end user (e.g., IPsec terminator). On the other hand, resource-hungry virtualized NFs are run in the NSP data center, where they can take advantage of the superior computing and storage capabilities. As an application, we also present a novel technique to deploy a distributed service, specifically a web filter, to leverage both the low latency of a CPE and the computational power of a data center. We then show that also the core network, today dedicated solely to packet routing, can be exploited to provide useful services. In particular, we propose a novel method to provide distributed network services in core network devices by means of task distribution and a seamless coordination among the peers involved. The aim is to transform existing network nodes (e.g., routers, switches, access points) into a highly distributed data acquisition and processing platform, which will significantly reduce the storage requirements at the Network Operations Center and the packet duplication overhead. Finally, we propose to use new programmable network devices in data center networks to provide much needed services to distributed applications. By offloading part of the computation directly to the networking hardware, we show that it is possible to reduce both the network traffic and the overall job completion time

Hybrid switching : converging packet and TDM flows in a single platform

Optical fibers have brought fast and reliable data transmission to today’s network. The immense fiber build-out over the last few years has generated a wide array of new access technologies, transport and network protocols, and next-generation services in the Local Area Network (LAN), Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), and Wide Area Network (WAN). All these different technologies, protocols, and services were introduced to address particular telecommunication needs. To remain competitive in the market, the service providers must offer most of these services, while maintaining their own profitability. However, offering a large variety of equipment, protocols, and services posses a big challenge for service carriers because it requires a huge investment in different technology platforms, lots of training of staff, and the management of all these networks. In today’s network, service providers use SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) as a basic TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) transport network. SONET was primarily designed to carry voice traffic from telephone networks. However, with the explosion of traffic in the Internet, the same SONET based TDM network is optimized to support increasing demand for packet based Internet network services (data, voice, video, teleconference etc.) at access networks and LANs. Therefore the service providers need to support their Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructure as well as in the legacy telephony infrastructure. Supporting both TDM and packet services in the present condition needs multilayer operations which is complex, expensive, and difficult to manage. A hybrid switch is a novel architecture that combines packets (IP) and TDM switching in a unified access platform and provides seamless integration of access networks and LANs with MAN/WAN networks. The ability to fully integrate these two capabilities in a single chassis will allow service providers to deploy a more cost effective and flexible architecture that can support a variety of different services. This thesis develops a hybrid switch which is capable of offering bundled services for TDM switching and packet routing. This is done by dividing the switch’s bandwidth into VT1.5 (Virtual Tributary -1.5) channels and providing SONET based signaling for routing the data and controlling the switch’s resources. The switch is a TDM based architecture which allows each switch’s port to be independently configured for any mixture of packet and TDM traffic, including 100% packet and 100% TDM. This switch allows service providers to simplify their edge networks by consolidating the number of separate boxes needed to provide fast and reliable access. This switch also reduces the number of network management systems needed, and decreases the resources needed to install, provision and maintain the network because of its ability to “collapse” two network layers into one platform. The scope of this thesis includes system architecture, logic implementation, and verification testing, and performance evaluation of the hybrid switch. The architecture consists of ingress/egress ports, an arbiter and a crossbar. Data from ingress ports is carried to the egress ports via VT1.5 channels which are switched at the cross point of the crossbar. The crossbar setup and channel assignments at ingress port are done by the arbiter. The design was tested by simulation and the hardware cost was estimated. The performance results showed that the switch is non-blocking, provide differentiated service, and has an overall effective throughput of 80%. This result is a significant step towards the goal of building a switch that can support multiprotocol and provide different network capabilities into one platform. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a prototype of the hybrid switch with broadband capability

FPGAs in Industrial Control Applications

The aim of this paper is to review the state-of-the-art of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technologies and their contribution to industrial control applications. Authors start by addressing various research fields which can exploit the advantages of FPGAs. The features of these devices are then presented, followed by their corresponding design tools. To illustrate the benefits of using FPGAs in the case of complex control applications, a sensorless motor controller has been treated. This controller is based on the Extended Kalman Filter. Its development has been made according to a dedicated design methodology, which is also discussed. The use of FPGAs to implement artificial intelligence-based industrial controllers is then briefly reviewed. The final section presents two short case studies of Neural Network control systems designs targeting FPGAs

Results analysis and validation - D5.3

Deliverable D5.3 del projecte OneFITPostprint (author’s final draft

Network functions virtualization: the long road to commercial deployments

Network operators are under pressure to offer efficient network-based services while keeping service deployment costs to a minimum. Network functions virtualization (NFV) can potentially revolutionize network-based services bringing low-deployment costs for network operators. The NFV has been introduced to ultimately extend the non-proprietary and open-standard-based model to network and service deployments, significant improvements to today’s proprietary locked implementations. Notwithstanding the continuous efforts of both academia and industry to support the NFV paradigm, the current NFV solutions offered are still in its infancy. In this survey, we provide a detailed background of NFV to establish a comprehensive understanding of the subject, ranging from the basics to more advanced topics. Moreover, we offer a comprehensive overview of the NFV main concepts, standardization efforts, the benefits of NFV, and discussions of the NFV architecture as defined by the European telecommunications standardization institute (ETSI). Furthermore, we discuss the NFV applicability and current open source projects. We then highlight NFV requirements, design considerations, and developmental architectural impairments and barriers to commercial NFV deployments. Finally, we conclude enumerating future directions for NFV developmentpublishe