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

Deliverable DJRA1.3: Tool prototype for creating and stitching multiple network resources for virtual infrastructures

This document describes the prototype FEDERICA Slice Tool developed for the virtualization of network elements in FEDERICA and for creating and stitching network resources over this virtual infrastructure. An SNMP-based resource discovery prototype is also introduced as a new functionality to be integrated in the tool.The deliverable also presents aviability study for the use of traffic prioritization in the FEDERICA infrastructure and some network performance measurements on a real slice within FEDERICA.This document reports the final results of JRA1.2 Activity in the development of a tool prototype for creating sets ofvirtual resourcesinFEDERICA.The prototype goal is to simplify and automate part of the work for NOC.The tool may also serve,with different privileges, a FEDERICA user to operate on his/her slice. The tool described here was designed with the objective of providing an interactive application with a graphical interface to operate on resources for the NOC and the end users (researchers). The tool simplify the creation and configuration of resources in a slice and it is a mandatory step to ensure scalability of the NOC effort. It offers an interactive Graphical User Interface that translates the users’ actions to commands in the substrate (networknodesandV-nodes)andslice elements(VirtualMachines).User accounts may be created for the NOC and for researchers, each with specific privileges to enable different sets of capabilities. The NOC account has full access to all the resources in the substrate, while each user’account has full access only to the virtual resources in his/her slice. The tool has been developed using the Java programming language as Open Source code and relies on the open source Globus® Toolkit. Testing has been performed in a laboratory environment and on some FEDERICA substrate equipment (1switch, 2VMwareServers) in their standard configuration. For testing the router, web services and GUI an additional computer was used, using a public IP address.Postprint (published version

An Open Management and Administration Platform for IEEE 802.11 Networks

The deployment of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) has greatly increased in past years. Due to the large deployment of the WLAN, the immediate need of management platforms has been recognized, which has a significant impact on the performance of a WLAN. Although there are various vendor-specific and proprietary solutions available in the market to cope with the management of wireless LAN, they have problems in interoperability and compatibility. To address this issues, IETF has come up with the interoperability standard of management of WLANs devices, Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) protocol, which is still in the draft phase. Commercial implementation of this draft protocol from WLAN equipment vendors is rather expensive. Open source community, therefore, tried to provide free management solutions. An open source project called openCAPWAP was initiated. However, it lacks a graphic user interface that makes it hard to implement for novice network administrators or regular customers. Therefore, the researcher designed and developed a web interface framework that encapsulates openCAPWAP at the bottom to provide user-friendly management experience. This application platform was designed to work with any remote web server in the public domain through which it can connect to access points or access controllers through a secure shell to configure them. This open platform is purely open source-based. It is operating system independent: it can be implemented on any open source environment such as regular Linux operating system or embedded operation system small form factor single board computers. The platform was designed and tested in a laboratory environment and a remote system. This development contributes to network administration in both network planning and operational management of the WLAN networks

Delivering knowledge in the field: A telecommunications service provision and maintenance case

This paper proposes a novel approach to providing knowledge management services in a business process wherein field engineers are the main process actors, providing and maintaining telecommunications services. Cooperating multi-agents play a central role for the provision of knowledge management services by integrating heterogeneous systems to collect related knowledge for the execution of mobile tasks. The proposed system is expected to increase both the performance of the mobile workforce and customer satisfaction by supporting and encouraging knowledge sharing

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-

Operator assistant to support deep space network link monitor and control

Preparing the Deep Space Network (DSN) stations to support spacecraft missions (referred to as pre-cal, for pre-calibration) is currently an operator and time intensive activity. Operators are responsible for sending and monitoring several hundred operator directivities, messages, and warnings. Operator directives are used to configure and calibrate the various subsystems (antenna, receiver, etc.) necessary to establish a spacecraft link. Messages and warnings are issued by the subsystems upon completion of an operation, changes of status, or an anomalous condition. Some points of pre-cal are logically parallel. Significant time savings could be realized if the existing Link Monitor and Control system (LMC) could support the operator in exploiting the parallelism inherent in pre-cal activities. Currently, operators may work on the individual subsystems in parallel, however, the burden of monitoring these parallel operations resides solely with the operator. Messages, warnings, and directives are all presented as they are received; without being correlated to the event that triggered them. Pre-cal is essentially an overhead activity. During pre-cal, no mission is supported, and no other activity can be performed using the equipment in the link. Therefore, it is highly desirable to reduce pre-cal time as much as possible. One approach to do this, as well as to increase efficiency and reduce errors, is the LMC Operator Assistant (OA). The LMC OA prototype demonstrates an architecture which can be used in concert with the existing LMC to exploit parallelism in pre-cal operations while providing the operators with a true monitoring capability, situational awareness and positive control. This paper presents an overview of the LMC OA architecture and the results from initial prototyping and test activities

Easy 4G/LTE IMSI Catchers for Non-Programmers

IMSI Catchers are tracking devices that break the privacy of the subscribers of mobile access networks, with disruptive effects to both the communication services and the trust and credibility of mobile network operators. Recently, we verified that IMSI Catcher attacks are really practical for the state-of-the-art 4G/LTE mobile systems too. Our IMSI Catcher device acquires subscription identities (IMSIs) within an area or location within a few seconds of operation and then denies access of subscribers to the commercial network. Moreover, we demonstrate that these attack devices can be easily built and operated using readily available tools and equipment, and without any programming. We describe our experiments and procedures that are based on commercially available hardware and unmodified open source software

Software-defined networking: guidelines for experimentation and validation in large-scale real world scenarios

Part 1: IIVC WorkshopInternational audienceThis article thoroughly details large-scale real world experiments using Software-Defined Networking in the testbed setup. More precisely, it provides a description of the foundation technology behind these experiments, which in turn is focused around OpenFlow and on the OFELIA testbed. In this testbed preliminary experiments were performed in order to tune up settings and procedures, analysing the encountered problems and their respective solutions. A methodology consisting of five large-scale experiments is proposed in order to properly validate and improve the evaluation techniques used in OpenFlow scenarios