A survey of Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS): Past, present and future

Virtual Private LAN services (VPLS) is a Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN) service that has gained immense popularity due to a number of its features, such as protocol independence, multipoint-to-multipoint mesh connectivity, robust security, low operational cost (in terms of optimal resource utilization), and high scalability. In addition to the traditional VPLS architectures, novel VPLS solutions have been designed leveraging new emerging paradigms, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), to keep up with the increasing demand. These emerging solutions help in enhancing scalability, strengthening security, and optimizing resource utilization. This paper aims to conduct an in-depth survey of various VPLS architectures and highlight different characteristics through insightful comparisons. Moreover, the article discusses numerous technical aspects such as security, scalability, compatibility, tunnel management, operational issues, and complexity, along with the lessons learned. Finally, the paper outlines future research directions related to VPLS. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to furnish a detailed survey of VPLS.University College DublinAcademy of Finlan

A survey of trends and motivations regarding Communication Service Providers' metro area network implementations

Relevance of research on telecommunications networks is predicated upon the implementations which it explicitly claims or implicitly subsumes. This paper supports researchers through a survey of Communications Service Providers current implementations within the metro area, and trends that are expected to shape the next-generation metro area network. The survey is composed of a quantitative component, complemented by a qualitative component carried out among field experts. Among the several findings, it has been found that service providers with large subscriber base sizes, are less agile in their response to technological change than those with smaller subscriber base sizes: thus, copper media are still an important component in the set of access network technologies. On the other hand, service providers with large subscriber base sizes are strongly committed to deploying distributed access architectures, notably using remote access nodes like remote OLT and remote MAC-PHY. This study also shows that the extent of remote node deployment for multi-access edge computing is about the same as remote node deployment for distributed access architectures, indicating that these two aspects of metro area networks are likely to be co-deployed.Comment: 84 page

Architectures et mécanismes de fédération dans les environnements cloud computing et cloud networking

Presented in the literature as a new technology, Cloud Computing has become essential in the development and delivery of IT services. Given the innovative potential of Cloud, our thesis was conducted in the context of this promising technology. It was clear that the Cloud would change the way we develop, manage and use information systems. However, the adoption and popularization of Cloud were slow and difficult given the youth of the concepts and heterogeneity of the existing solutions. This difficulty in adoption is reflected by the lack of standard, the presence of heterogeneous architectures and APIs, the introduction of Vendor Lock-In imposed by the market leaders and the lack of cloud federation principles and facilitators. The main motivation for our PhD is to simplify the adoption of the cloud paradigm and the migration to cloud environments and technologies. Our goal has consequently been to improve interoperability and enable federation in the cloud. The thesis focused on two main areas. The first concerns the convergence of future networks and clouds and the second the improvement of federation and interoperability between heterogeneous cloud solutions and services. Based on our work in state of the art about Cloud Computing and Cloud Networking, we defined in this thesis two architectures for Cloud federation. The first architecture enables the merging (convergence) of Cloud Computing and Cloud Networking. The second architecture addresses interoperability between services and proposes cloud-brokering solutions. The study enabled the identification of two essential components for cloud federation, namely: a generic interface and a message exchange system. These two components have been two contributions of our thesis. The proposed federation architectures and these two components summarize the four major contributions of our workPrésenté dans la littérature comme une nouvelle technologie, le Cloud Computing est devenu incontournable dans la mise en place et la fourniture des services informatiques. Cette thèse s’inscrit dans le contexte de cette nouvelle technologie qui est en mesure de transformer la mise en place, la gestion et l’utilisation des systèmes d’information. L'adoption et la vulgarisation du Cloud ont été ralenties par la jeunesse même des concepts et l'hétérogénéité des solutions existantes. Cette difficulté d'adoption se manifeste par l'absence de standard, l'hétérogénéité des architectures et des API, le Vendor Lock-In imposé par les leaders du marché et des manques qui ralentissent la fédération. La motivation principale de la thèse est de simplifier l'adoption du cloud et la migration vers ses environnements et technologies. Notre objectif est de proposer des solutions d'interopérabilité et de fédération dans le Cloud. Le travail de recherche s’est aussi articulé autour de deux grands axes. Le premier concerne le rapprochement des réseaux du futur et des Clouds. Le deuxième axe concerne l'interopérabilité et la fédération entre solutions et services cloud. Une analyse de l’état de l’art sur le Cloud Computing et le Cloud Networking, a permis de confirmer des manques pressentis et de proposer deux architectures de fédération Cloud. La première architecture permet le rapprochement entre le Cloud Computing et le Cloud Networking. La seconde architecture facilite l'interopérabilité et le courtage de services Cloud. L'étude des deux architectures a fait ressortir deux composants primordiaux et essentiels pour assurer la fédération: une interface générique et un système d'échange de messages. Ces deux composants correspondent à deux contributions centrales de la thèse et reflètent l’ensemble des contributions (quatre au total) du travail de recherch