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-

Survivable Virtual Network Embedding in Transport Networks

Network Virtualization (NV) is perceived as an enabling technology for the future Internet and the 5th Generation (5G) of mobile networks. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with emerging applications’ Quality of Service (QoS) requirements in an ossified Internet. NV addresses the current Internet’s ossification problem by allowing the co-existence of multiple Virtual Networks (VNs), each customized to a specific purpose on the shared Internet. NV also facilitates a new business model, namely, Network-as-a-Service (NaaS), which provides a separation between applications and services, and the networks supporting them. 5G mobile network operators have adopted the NaaS model to partition their physical network resources into multiple VNs (also called network slices) and lease them to service providers. Service providers use the leased VNs to offer customized services satisfying specific QoS requirements without any investment in deploying and managing a physical network infrastructure. The benefits of NV come at additional resource management challenges. A fundamental problem in NV is to efficiently map the virtual nodes and virtual links of a VN to physical nodes and paths, respectively, known as the Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) problem. A VNE that can survive physical resource failures is known as the survivable VNE (SVNE) problem, and has received significant attention recently. In this thesis, we address variants of the SVNE problem with different bandwidth and reliability requirements for transport networks. Specifically, the thesis includes four main contributions. First, a connectivity-aware VNE approach that ensures VN connectivity without bandwidth guarantee in the face of multiple link failures. Second, a joint spare capacity allocation and VNE scheme that provides bandwidth guarantee against link failures by augmenting VNs with necessary spare capacity. Third, a generalized recovery mechanism to re-embed the VNs that are impacted by a physical node failure. Fourth, a reliable VNE scheme with dedicated protection that allows tuning of available bandwidth of a VN during a physical link failure. We show the effectiveness of the proposed SVNE schemes through extensive simulations. We believe that the thesis can set the stage for further research specially in the area of automated failure management for next generation networks

Software Defined Applications in Cellular and Optical Networks

abstract: Small wireless cells have the potential to overcome bottlenecks in wireless access through the sharing of spectrum resources. A novel access backhaul network architecture based on a Smart Gateway (Sm-GW) between the small cell base stations, e.g., LTE eNBs, and the conventional backhaul gateways, e.g., LTE Servicing/Packet Gateways (S/P-GWs) has been introduced to address the bottleneck. The Sm-GW flexibly schedules uplink transmissions for the eNBs. Based on software defined networking (SDN) a management mechanism that allows multiple operator to flexibly inter-operate via multiple Sm-GWs with a multitude of small cells has been proposed. This dissertation also comprehensively survey the studies that examine the SDN paradigm in optical networks. Along with the PHY functional split improvements, the performance of Distributed Converged Cable Access Platform (DCCAP) in the cable architectures especially for the Remote-PHY and Remote-MACPHY nodes has been evaluated. In the PHY functional split, in addition to the re-use of infrastructure with a common FFT module for multiple technologies, a novel cross functional split interaction to cache the repetitive QAM symbols across time at the remote node to reduce the transmission rate requirement of the fronthaul link has been proposed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201