1,928 research outputs found
Management and Orchestration of Network Slices in 5G, Fog, Edge and Clouds
Network slicing allows network operators to build multiple isolated virtual
networks on a shared physical network to accommodate a wide variety of services
and applications. With network slicing, service providers can provide a
cost-efficient solution towards meeting diverse performance requirements of
deployed applications and services. Despite slicing benefits, End-to-End
orchestration and management of network slices is a challenging and complicated
task. In this chapter, we intend to survey all the relevant aspects of network
slicing, with the focus on networking technologies such as Software-defined
networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) in 5G, Fog/Edge and
Cloud Computing platforms. To build the required background, this chapter
begins with a brief overview of 5G, Fog/Edge and Cloud computing, and their
interplay. Then we cover the 5G vision for network slicing and extend it to the
Fog and Cloud computing through surveying the state-of-the-art slicing
approaches in these platforms. We conclude the chapter by discussing future
directions, analyzing gaps and trends towards the network slicing realization.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures, Fog and Edge Computing: Principles and
Paradigms, Wiley Press, New York, USA, 201
Integrated NFV/SDN Architectures: A Systematic Literature Review
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN)
are new paradigms in the move towards open software and network hardware. While
NFV aims to virtualize network functions and deploy them into general purpose
hardware, SDN makes networks programmable by separating the control and data
planes. NFV and SDN are complementary technologies capable of providing one
network solution. SDN can provide connectivity between Virtual Network
Functions (VNFs) in a flexible and automated way, whereas NFV can use SDN as
part of a service function chain. There are many studies designing NFV/SDN
architectures in different environments. Researchers have been trying to
address reliability, performance, and scalability problems using different
architectural designs. This Systematic Literature Review (SLR) focuses on
integrated NFV/SDN architectures, with the following goals: i) to investigate
and provide an in-depth review of the state-of-the-art of NFV/SDN
architectures, ii) to synthesize their architectural designs, and iii) to
identify areas for further improvements. Broadly, this SLR will encourage
researchers to advance the current stage of development (i.e., the
state-of-the-practice) of integrated NFV/SDN architectures, and shed some light
on future research efforts and the challenges faced.Comment: Accepted for publication at ACM Computing Survey
Five Driving Forces of Multi-Access Edge Computing
The emergence of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) technology aims at
extending cloud computing capabilities to the edge of the wireless access
networks. MEC provides real-time, high-bandwidth, low-latency access to radio
network resources, allowing operators to open their networks to a new ecosystem
and value chain. Moreover, it will provide a new insight to the design of
future 5th Generation (5G) wireless systems. This paper describes five key
technologies, including Network Function Vitalization (NFV), Software Defined
Networking (SDN), Network Slicing, Information Centric Networking (ICN) and
Internet of Things (IoT), that intensify the widespread of MEC and its
adoption. Our goal is to provide the associativity between MEC and these five
driving technologies in 5G context while identifying the open challenges,
future directions, and tangible integration paths.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Magazin
SDN-Based Resource Management for Autonomous Vehicular Networks: A Multi-Access Edge Computing Approach
Enabling high-definition (HD)-map-assisted cooperative driving among
autonomous vehicles (AVs) to improve the navigation safety faces technical
challenges due to increased communication traffic volume for data dissemination
and increased number of computing/storing tasks on AVs. In this article, a new
architecture that combines multi-access edge computing (MEC) and
software-defined networking (SDN) is proposed for flexible resource management
and enhanced resource utilization. With MEC, the interworking of multiple
wireless access technologies can be realized to exploit the diversity gain over
a wide range of radio spectrum, and at the same time, computing/storing tasks
of an AV are collaboratively processed by servers and other AVs. Moreover, by
enabling SDN and network function virtualization (NFV) control modules at each
cloud-computing and MEC server, an efficient resource allocation framework is
proposed to enhance global resource sharing among different network
infrastructures. A case study is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of
the proposed resource allocation framework
Software Defined Networking Enabled Wireless Network Virtualization: Challenges and Solutions
Next generation (5G) wireless networks are expected to support the massive
data and accommodate a wide range of services/use cases with distinct
requirements in a cost-effective, flexible, and agile manner. As a promising
solution, wireless network virtualization (WNV), or network slicing, enables
multiple virtual networks to share the common infrastructure on demand, and to
be customized for different services/use cases. This article focuses on
network-wide resource allocation for realizing WNV. Specifically, the
motivations, the enabling platforms, and the benefits of WNV, are first
reviewed. Then, resource allocation for WNV along with the technical challenges
is discussed. Afterwards, a software defined networking (SDN) enabled resource
allocation framework is proposed to facilitate WNV, including the key
procedures and the corresponding modeling approaches. Furthermore, a case study
is provided as an example of resource allocation in WNV. Finally, some open
research topics essential to WNV are discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. To appear in IEEE Network Magazin
NFV and SDN - Key Technology Enablers for 5G Networks
Communication networks are undergoing their next evolutionary step towards
5G. The 5G networks are envisioned to provide a flexible, scalable, agile and
programmable network platform over which different services with varying
requirements can be deployed and managed within strict performance bounds. In
order to address these challenges a paradigm shift is taking place in the
technologies that drive the networks, and thus their architecture. Innovative
concepts and techniques are being developed to power the next generation mobile
networks. At the heart of this development lie Network Function Virtualization
and Software Defined Networking technologies, which are now recognized as being
two of the key technology enablers for realizing 5G networks, and which have
introduced a major change in the way network services are deployed and
operated. For interested readers that are new to the field of SDN and NFV this
paper provides an overview of both these technologies with reference to the 5G
networks. Most importantly it describes how the two technologies complement
each other and how they are expected to drive the networks of near future.Comment: This is an accepted version and consists of 11 pages, 9 figures and
32 reference
Survey on Network Virtualization Hypervisors for Software Defined Networking
Software defined networking (SDN) has emerged as a promising paradigm for
making the control of communication networks flexible. SDN separates the data
packet forwarding plane, i.e., the data plane, from the control plane and
employs a central controller. Network virtualization allows the flexible
sharing of physical networking resources by multiple users (tenants). Each
tenant runs its own applications over its virtual network, i.e., its slice of
the actual physical network. The virtualization of SDN networks promises to
allow networks to leverage the combined benefits of SDN networking and network
virtualization and has therefore attracted significant research attention in
recent years. A critical component for virtualizing SDN networks is an SDN
hypervisor that abstracts the underlying physical SDN network into multiple
logically isolated virtual SDN networks (vSDNs), each with its own controller.
We comprehensively survey hypervisors for SDN networks in this article. We
categorize the SDN hypervisors according to their architecture into centralized
and distributed hypervisors. We furthermore sub-classify the hypervisors
according to their execution platform into hypervisors running exclusively on
general-purpose compute platforms, or on a combination of general-purpose
compute platforms with general- or special-purpose network elements. We
exhaustively compare the network attribute abstraction and isolation features
of the existing SDN hypervisors. As part of the future research agenda, we
outline the development of a performance evaluation framework for SDN
hypervisors.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, in print, 201
Management of Network Slicing in 5G Radio Access Networks: Functional Framework and Information Models
Network slicing is one of the key features for 5G networks to be able to
accommodate the anticipated diversity of applications and business actors in a
resource-efficient manner. While significant progress has already been achieved
at 3GPP specifications level with regard to the system architectural and
functional aspects for the realisation of network slicing in 5G networks,
management solutions for the exploitation of this feature in the Next
Generation Radio Access Network (NG-RAN) are still at a very incipient stage.
In this context, this paper presents a framework for the management of network
slicing in a NG-RAN infrastructure, identifying the functions, interfaces and
information models that are necessary to enable the automation of the RAN
slicing provisioning and management processes. Accordingly, a plausible
information model intended to describe the manageable characteristics and
behaviour of a RAN slice is developed and its applicability discussed in an
illustrative neutral host provider scenario.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publicatio
Network Slicing for Service-Oriented Networks Under Resource Constraints
To support multiple on-demand services over fixed communication networks,
network operators must allow flexible customization and fast provision of their
network resources. One effective approach to this end is network
virtualization, whereby each service is mapped to a virtual subnetwork
providing dedicated on-demand support to network users. In practice, each
service consists of a prespecified sequence of functions, called a service
function chain (SFC), while each service function in a SFC can only be provided
by some given network nodes. Thus, to support a given service, we must select
network function nodes according to the SFC and determine the routing strategy
through the function nodes in a specified order. A crucial network slicing
problem that needs to be addressed is how to optimally localize the service
functions in a physical network as specified by the SFCs, subject to link and
node capacity constraints. In this paper, we formulate the network slicing
problem as a mixed binary linear program and establish its strong NP-hardness.
Furthermore, we propose efficient penalty successive upper bound minimization
(PSUM) and PSUM-R(ounding) algorithms, and two heuristic algorithms to solve
the problem. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of
the proposed algorithms.Comment: This manuscript serves as the online technical report for the paper
accepted by IEEE JSAC with special issue on Emerging Technologies in
Software-Driven Communicatio
ICN-aware Network Slicing Framework for Mobile Data Distribution
Network slicing offers an opportunity to realize ICN as a slice in 5G
deployment. We demonstrate this through a generic service orchestration
framework operating on commodity compute, storage and bandwidth resource pool
to realize multiple ICN service slices. Specifically, we show the dynamic
creation of real-time audio/video conferencing slices, over which
multi-participant communication is enabled. These slices leverage ICN features
of name-based routing, integrated security, inherent support for multicasting
and mobility, and in-network caching-and-computing to scale and deliver
services efficiently, while dynamically adapting to varying service demands.
Proposed framework also enables mobility-on-demand feature as a service over an
ICN slice to more effectively support producer mobility over multi-access
links, such as LTE, Wifi and Ethernet, as will be demonstrated with our demo
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