High-speed, in-band performance measurement instrumentation for next generation IP networks

Facilitating always-on instrumentation of Internet traffic for the purposes of performance measurement is crucial in order to enable accountability of resource usage and automated network control, management and optimisation. This has proven infeasible to date due to the lack of native measurement mechanisms that can form an integral part of the network‟s main forwarding operation. However, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) specification enables the efficient encoding and processing of optional per-packet information as a native part of the network layer, and this constitutes a strong reason for IPv6 to be adopted as the ubiquitous next generation Internet transport. In this paper we present a very high-speed hardware implementation of in-line measurement, a truly native traffic instrumentation mechanism for the next generation Internet, which facilitates performance measurement of the actual data-carrying traffic at small timescales between two points in the network. This system is designed to operate as part of the routers' fast path and to incur an absolutely minimal impact on the network operation even while instrumenting traffic between the edges of very high capacity links. Our results show that the implementation can be easily accommodated by current FPGA technology, and real Internet traffic traces verify that the overhead incurred by instrumenting every packet over a 10 Gb/s operational backbone link carrying a typical workload is indeed negligible

Performance Comparison of Dual Connectivity and Hard Handover for LTE-5G Tight Integration in mmWave Cellular Networks

MmWave communications are expected to play a major role in the Fifth generation of mobile networks. They offer a potential multi-gigabit throughput and an ultra-low radio latency, but at the same time suffer from high isotropic pathloss, and a coverage area much smaller than the one of LTE macrocells. In order to address these issues, highly directional beamforming and a very high-density deployment of mmWave base stations were proposed. This Thesis aims to improve the reliability and performance of the 5G network by studying its tight and seamless integration with the current LTE cellular network. In particular, the LTE base stations can provide a coverage layer for 5G mobile terminals, because they operate on microWave frequencies, which are less sensitive to blockage and have a lower pathloss. This document is a copy of the Master's Thesis carried out by Mr. Michele Polese under the supervision of Dr. Marco Mezzavilla and Prof. Michele Zorzi. It will propose an LTE-5G tight integration architecture, based on mobile terminals' dual connectivity to LTE and 5G radio access networks, and will evaluate which are the new network procedures that will be needed to support it. Moreover, this new architecture will be implemented in the ns-3 simulator, and a thorough simulation campaign will be conducted in order to evaluate its performance, with respect to the baseline of handover between LTE and 5G.Comment: Master's Thesis carried out by Mr. Michele Polese under the supervision of Dr. Marco Mezzavilla and Prof. Michele Zorz

Architecture, design, and modeling of the OPSnet asynchronous optical packet switching node

An all-optical packet-switched network supporting multiple services represents a long-term goal for network operators and service providers alike. The EPSRC-funded OPSnet project partnership addresses this issue from device through to network architecture perspectives with the key objective of the design, development, and demonstration of a fully operational asynchronous optical packet switch (OPS) suitable for 100 Gb/s dense-wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) operation. The OPS is built around a novel buffer and control architecture that has been shown to be highly flexible and to offer the promise of fair and consistent packet delivery at high load conditions with full support for quality of service (QoS) based on differentiated services over generalized multiprotocol label switching

Performance Comparison of Dual Connectivity and Hard Handover for LTE-5G Tight Integration

Communications at frequencies above 10 GHz (the mmWave band) are expected to play a major role for the next generation of cellular networks (5G), because of the potential multi-gigabit, ultra-low latency performance of this technology. mmWave frequencies however suffer from very high isotropic pathloss, which may result in cells with a much smaller coverage area than current LTE macrocells. High directionality techniques will be used to improve signal quality and extend coverage area, along with a high density deployment of mmWave base stations (BS). However, when propagation conditions are hard and it is difficult to provide high quality coverage with mmWave BS, it is necessary to rely on previous generation LTE base stations, which make use of lower frequencies (900 MHz - 3.5 GHz), which are less sensitive to blockage and experience lower pathloss. In order to provide ultra-reliable services to mobile users there is a need for network architectures that tightly and seamlessly integrate the LTE and mmWave Radio Access Technologies. In this paper we will present two possible alternatives for this integration and show how simulation tools can be used to assess and compare their performance.Comment: This paper was accepted for presentation at the ninth EAI SIMUtools 2016 conference, August 22 - 23, 2016, Prague, Czech Republi

Toward Network-based DDoS Detection in Software-defined Networks

To combat susceptibility of modern computing systems to cyberattack, identifying and disrupting malicious traffic without human intervention is essential. To accomplish this, three main tasks for an effective intrusion detection system have been identified: monitor network traffic, categorize and identify anomalous behavior in near real time, and take appropriate action against the identified threat. This system leverages distributed SDN architecture and the principles of Artificial Immune Systems and Self-Organizing Maps to build a network-based intrusion detection system capable of detecting and terminating DDoS attacks in progress

Serialized Asynchronous Links for NoC

This paper proposes an asynchronous serialized link for NoC that can achieve the same levels of performance in terms of flits per second as a synchronous link but with a reduced number of wires in the point to point switch links and reduced power consumption. This is achieved by employing serialization in the asynchronous domain as opposed to synchronous to facilitate the removal of global clocking on the serial links. Based on transistor level simulations using 0.12 ?m foundry models it has been shown that it is possible to achieve the same level of performance as synchronous but with 75% reduction in wires and 65% reduction in power for a 300 MFlit/s link with 8 buffers with a switch clock speed of 300 MHz. Furthermore the paper presents the design requirements arising from interfacing switches of synchronous NoC and asynchronous serial links

Traffic Engineering with Segment Routing: SDN-based Architectural Design and Open Source Implementation

Traffic Engineering (TE) in IP carrier networks is one of the functions that can benefit from the Software Defined Networking paradigm. By logically centralizing the control of the network, it is possible to "program" per-flow routing based on TE goals. Traditional per-flow routing requires a direct interaction between the SDN controller and each node that is involved in the traffic paths. Depending on the granularity and on the temporal properties of the flows, this can lead to scalability issues for the amount of routing state that needs to be maintained in core network nodes and for the required configuration traffic. On the other hand, Segment Routing (SR) is an emerging approach to routing that may simplify the route enforcement delegating all the configuration and per-flow state at the border of the network. In this work we propose an architecture that integrates the SDN paradigm with SR-based TE, for which we have provided an open source reference implementation. We have designed and implemented a simple TE/SR heuristic for flow allocation and we show and discuss experimental results.Comment: Extended version of poster paper accepted for EWSDN 2015 (version v4 - December 2015